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FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 



ADIRONDACK MOUNTAIN CLUB EDITION 
LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES OF 
WHICH THIS IS NUMBER- 










































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Haystack, Little 



FRIENDLY 

ADIRONDACK 

PEAKS 


BY 

ROBERT S. WICKHAM 


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PRIVATELY PUBLISHED 

1924 


Fi&7 

.A1W43 


Copyright, 1924 

ROBERT S. WICKHAM 


J 



\ 


PRINTED IN TJ. S. A. 


VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC. 
BINQHAMTON AND NEW YORK 




AUG -2 1924 • 

C1A801195 



V 


DEDICATED TO 
LITTLE SQUAW, 

A GOOD WOODSMAN 




“For but few of them that begin to come hither, 
do show their face on these mountains.” 

Pilgrim’s Progress. 
































I 











































FOREWORD 


The adjective friendly is properly descrip¬ 
tive of Adirondack mountains. I have a 
friend who has climbed in Switzerland, the 
Rockies, Alaska, but he comes summers to the 
Adirondacks for walking trips among moun¬ 
tains not too large to repel, but of a size to 
invite, and large enough for reasonable exer¬ 
tion, enjoyment and beauty of views. There 
are many wild spots hidden among these hills, 
to be enjoyed only by packing for two or three 
days or more, and trips may be taken across 
the region, in various directions, giving still 
a taste of virgin wildness. The following 
narrative, which grew out of a habit of keep¬ 
ing a journal, is written with the belief that 
others may learn, through our experience, 
how to enjoy some of this wildness, and in the 
hope that something of the quiet spirit of the 
hills may be reflected from its pages. 

Robert S. Wickham 

November, 1923, 

Binghamton, N. Y. 




/ 

























CONTENTS 


COLD RIVER COUNTRY 

PAGE 

Acquiring Woods Legs.19 

The Approach.35 

Santanoni.51 

INDIAN PASS. 67 

THE BIG RANGE 

Flowed Land. 77 

McIntyre and Colden.89 

Marcy.hi 

Range Trail.125 

ST. HUBERT’S.137 

HUNTER’S PASS 

The Pass.* 5 i 

Nipple Top. *^3 

..*73 

APPENDIX. i8 5 

INDEX. i8 7 








































LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Haystack, Little and Big. Frontispiece 

PACINO 

PAGE 

Map.186 

Gore around Lake Colden.96 

In Hunter’s Pass.154 

Kim on Dix.176 

On Opalescent River.112 

Packing up 32 

Santanoni and Panther Peak above Henderson’s 
Crest, from Indian Pass.68 

South from height of Hunter’s Pass.158 

Upper Preston Pond.60 
















Cold River Country 

“Each time man touches Mother Earth his strength 
renewed.” —Unknown Author. 



























ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 





























ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 


K IM, our Fox Terrier, aged five, Al¬ 
vin, seventeen, and myself, young by 
reason of many Augusts spent in Ad¬ 
irondack forests, left home (Tuesday, August 
7, 1923) with our grub and duffle in packs— 
Alvin’s containing the tent, blankets, extra 
woolens, hatchet, and other sundries, wrapped 
in a rubber blanket or poncho, strapped in a 
shoulder harness—mine containing two nest¬ 
ing aluminum pails, fry pan and plates, and 
food in cotton cloth bags with tie strings, in 
two cylindrical duffle bags, also strapped in 
a shoulder harness. My pack was heavier 
than I hoped it might be—at least fifty pounds 
—this because our trip required it, as we had 
planned to go up Cold River Trail from Long 
Lake, around Preston Ponds, new country to 
us, and then to and over the big range, with no 
I 9 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


provision point short of Keene Valley. Al¬ 
though bringing the heaviest packing on the 
start, when green and unaccustomed to the 
pull of straps over tender shoulders, there was 
no help for it—we would go slowly and take it 
easily, resting frequently, the only way to en¬ 
joy such a trip—in time your coefficient rises, 
while you still take it easily. 

On arrival at the station at Utica, we ate 
our lunch, and noted that we were not alone 
in our tramping clothing, and with packs, at 
this gateway to the Adirondacks, for we saw 
several men likewise dressed and equipped, 
also on their way in. While sitting in the 
waiting room, before our train was called, a 
woman espied Kim, and patted him, telling us 
that she had just lost a dog, of which Kim re¬ 
minded her. Kim rose to the occasion, and 
gave her a sympathetic tail wag. 

We changed cars at Carter, and after a short 
ride through thick woods, reached Raquette 
Lake, where we boarded a small launch, 
which took us across the southern end of the 


20 


ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 

lake, and up Marion River to a three quarter 
of a mile carry, made on a train of two small 
cars pulled by a puffy little engine, to Uto- 
wana Lake, where we stepped into another 
launch for the ride through the latter lake, 
and then through Eagle, into Blue Mountain 
Lake. I inquired of the boatman about ho¬ 
tels, and he recommended one. On arrival 
at the dock, at the last stop the launch made, 
we were informed that the hotel was full. A 
young man came to our rescue, telling us to 
put our packs in his truck, and he would take 
us where he thought we would be taken care 
of. A short ride, and we came to a group of 
cottages, and a large dining room, on the road¬ 
side near the lake, where we obtained a room. 

Next morning we went into the dining 
room, tying Kim to a post on the piazza, from 
whence he could see us at the table. At our 
table was a doctor from New York, with his 
wife, daughter and two sons, one about Alvin’s 
age. They asked us many questions about 
our method and route of travel. 


21 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


After breakfast we started up Blue Moun¬ 
tain, an easy climb of nineteen hundred fifty 
feet, over a well traveled trail. We overtook 
the fire warden, on his way to the observation 
tower on the summit, two women, and an 
elderly man with a staff. The former told us 
he had helped cut the new Adirondack Moun¬ 
tain Club Trail from Blue Mountain Lake 
toward Cedar River. His evident apprecia¬ 
tion of the beauty of the surrounding country 
revealed him as a woods lover. 

The views from the observation tower were 
good. Below, to the west, lay island dotted 
Blue Mountain Lake, with small portions of 
Raquette Lake visible over beyond it; to the 
northwest, a number of ponds, nestling in the 
woods, with ridges behind, smaller in eleva¬ 
tion on toward the distant horizon. To the 
south we could just make out, peering from 
behind a ridge, the freight car crest of Snowy, 
lying to the west of Indian Lake, in Master 
Thomas K. Brown’s country. The best view 
was toward the east: Tirrel Pond, spread 


22 


ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 

out across the foot of the mountain, backed by 
a small, black timber topped ridge along its 
east shore, with picturesque ledges and slides 
half way up above the north end of the pond, 
with a higher wooded ridge rising farther to 
the east, and above the latter, the big moun¬ 
tains way off in the distance—Hoffman, Ma¬ 
comb, Dix, Haystack, Marcy, Colden, with his 
slides plainly visible as we looked along his 
western slope into Avalanche Pass, McIntyre, 
and Santanoni off to the northeast—peaks 
whose nearer acquaintance we hoped ere long 
to make. 

Reflection brought the thought that in Ad¬ 
irondack literature there had been almost no 
attempt to appraise the views from the higher 
mountains, other than Robert Marshall’s pam¬ 
phlet “The High Peaks of the Adirondacks,” 
written for and published by the Adirondack 
Mountain Club in 1922. If an attempt were 
to be made to rate the summit views as to 
their beauty, some standard must be taken by 
which to estimate their values. The standard 

23 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


would be, primeval, wild beauty, unspoiled 
by the hand of man, or the elements. The 
application of this standard would result in 
discrimination against views revealing indica¬ 
tions of civilization—settlements, cleared val¬ 
leys and fields, lumbered country—and views 
marred by fire scars. As it would be difficult, 
when on one peak, to recall to mind views 
from one or more others, it would be necessary 
to write down a description of the views there¬ 
from in the journal, enumerating their points 
of beauty, and wherein they did not come up 
to the standard, shortly after making each 
climb, while impressions were fresh, and in 
order to have data for comparison, when on 
subsequent peaks. 

We gazed for some time, then purchased 
post card views from the fire warden, and 
signed our names in his visitors’ register. He 
told us he had had about thirty-five hundred 
visitors during the summer season. An easy 
walk down, and we were in time for dinner. 

At the dinner table the obliging doctor of- 
24 


ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 


fered to take our packs, Kim and ourselves 
over to Long Lake in his car. After dinner 
we started, and ere long arrived at the post 
office, where we mailed post cards and several 
rolls of exposed film. A long wait ensued 
for a launch to take us down the lake, but we 
were under way at last, at about four-thirty. 

Long Lake is much wilder than one expects, 
after approaching it through the village— 
wooded shores, more cottages visible near 
the village than farther down. Kempshall 
Mountain loomed large on the southeast 
shore. Finally big Santanoni came into 
clear view—and he is big, spreading all over 
the landscape, squatting, sprawling upon it— 
the largest of the mountains in area—as if he 
had rested there, quietly, for many long ages, 
and intended to remain, undisturbed, for 
many more. Behind the north end of him 
we could see the valley down which came 
Cold River. 

After a ten mile ride the boatman put us off 
at Sabattis’. The boatman remembered, when 
25 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 

a boy, having seen the elder Sabattis—the son 
lives where the father used to. We inquired 
of a fisherman at the landing where the Ad¬ 
irondack Mountain Club Trail along the east 
side of the lake was located, and he took us a 
short distance from the lake shore and put us 
on it. It proved to be a good road through 
the woods at that place, and we soon saw some 
of the Club’s blue spot trail markers on the 
trees alongside. Our intention was, as it was 
late and we were soft, to go but a little ways 
and then camp for the night, but this was de¬ 
pendent upon finding water. It was a very 
dry piece of woods, and we walked on and on, 
the unaccustomed packing bringing the per¬ 
spiration in streams. Finally we came to a 
burned flat, started across it, and just at dusk 
found a swamp across the trail. Enough! 
Off went the packs from our shoulders, the 
little tent was up quickly, right in the trail, 
which we decided was soft enough for our 
tired bodies, and after a quickly prepared sup¬ 
per, we slept the sleep of the weary, with no 
26 


ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 


mosquitoes to bother us, though they were ex¬ 
pected because of the nearness of the swamp. 
We were not bothered by flies during the 
whole trip. Had we gone several weeks ear¬ 
lier, it would have been different. 

Next morning we arose in a fog. The 
water from the swamp was brown, and had 
much plant life in it. We had heard beaver 
tails slapping the swamp water during the 
evening before we fell asleep, and one of our 
before breakfast sallies was that we had to 
strain beaver hair from our tea, in order to 
reach it. After packing up we started for 
Shattuck’s Clearing, on Cold River, where we 
had been told a fire warden was stationed. It 
was a long walk, over flat, burned country, 
with the hot sun beating down upon us. Aft¬ 
erward we were told it was four miles from 
Long Lake to Shattuck’s—four Adirondack 
miles they proved to be. On the way we 
heard a noise behind us, and turned quickly 
enough to see a doe—red coated, flag flying— 
go bounding slowly away. 

27 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


We did not see as many deer on the trip as 
one usually does. We saw plenty of fresh 
tracks. The reason was Kim. He had two 
metal license tags suspended from his collar, 
one the Conservation Commission tag, permit¬ 
ting us to take him into State forest land, the 
other his general license tag, and his every 
movement caused them to strike together, with 
a clear, metallic click, which could be heard 
for some distance. His white, active little 
body was conspicuous against a green back¬ 
ground, the tree trunks, and the woods duff 
of the forest floor. On coming to a fresh scent 
Kim would become excited, follow it for a 
little ways, and then return to us, not having 
been trained to run deer. He took to digging 
in holes for woodchucks, moles and mice by 
instinct—it was in his blood. 

Shattuck’s proved to be a small, board 
shanty on a high bank overlooking the river, 
with two men and a baby in evidence, on the 
platform in front of the door. The fire war¬ 
den, new to the locality, gave us a little nega- 
28 


ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 

tive information about the country whither 
we were bound. After taking a picture of the 
shanty, we forded the river and followed the 
trail along the north shore. Shortly a beaver 
dam across the trail bothered us—the trail had 
not been clearly marked at that point. We 
followed false leads alongside the beaver flow 
for a few minutes, then dropped our packs and 
went back on a still-hunt for the trail, finally 
discovering that it went across the top of the 
beaver dam. We had not acquired our woods 
legs. It takes some time for eyes accustomed 
to reading and writing to visualize and bring 
into clear consciousness the data of trails, 
woods and mountains. Tired shoulders car¬ 
ried the packs back through the brush, across 
the dam, and to and up the river on the trail, 
through black timber, with glimpses, now and 
then, of the river in its rocky bed to the right. 
In a little while we came to a new open camp, 
alongside the trail, and there ate our lunch, 
Alvin developing skill in turning flapjacks 
with the frying pan. A party of young men 
29 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


and boys passed us while we were resting, on 
their way to climb Mount Seward. Kim had 
indulged his roving instincts to such an extent 
that he was too tired and nervous to eat. 
After he had lain down quietly beside us for 
a short time, a big flapjack, with a little sugar 
sprinkled on top, tempted him. 

When ready to resume walking, Alvin took 
my heavier pack and after proceeding a mile 
or so we came to a small gorge in the river 
with a large pool at its foot, where we stopped. 
Alvin rigged up the pocket fishing rod and 
went to cast flies in the pool for trout while I 
made camp, above the rocks overlooking the 
river. When supper was ready Alvin re¬ 
turned saying he had broken the rod, had taken 
a swim, and wished the soap for a bath. So 
to bed, which was none too soft—we did not 
bother with balsam. 

In the morning we rested. Alvin made a 
friction fire set out of a dry cedar log which 
had fallen on top of a high rock by the stream 
below the tent, splitting off a smooth slab on 
30 


ACQUIRING WOODS LEGS 

the edge of which to revolve the drill, with 
the aid of a birch stick and shoe string bow, 
using shredded cedar bark for tinder, in ob¬ 
taining his fire. A deer visited camp, a doe 
—Alvin saw her within a stone’s throw of our 
tent. A red squirrel chattered at Kim from 
a tree trunk above him—to his endless interest. 

We felt so refreshed because of our rest that 
we decided to move up the river, so packed 
up, resuming travel on the trail at about four 
o’clock in the afternoon. Shortly we met two 
young men with packs, and an abundant sup¬ 
ply of maps. Asked where they had been 
they said they had tried for two or three days 
to find Preston Ponds, our intermediate objec¬ 
tive, but had been unable to locate them be¬ 
cause of lumber slashings. They had found 
a tote road leading toward the ponds, but 
beaver dams had flooded it and the woods 
alongside, so much so that they could not find 
their way around the flows. I asked if they 
had found the outlet from Preston Ponds, and 
t;he pond below them called Duck Hole, which 
3i 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


flowed into Cold River—that could not be en¬ 
tirely obliterated by lumbering or beaver 
dams. They were not sure that they had iden¬ 
tified it. We left them hoping we would have 
better luck. A little ways farther and the 
coming darkness warned us to stop, which we 
did, making camp on a small island in the 
river reached by stepping over some stream 
worn boulders—solid, Adirondack anortho¬ 
site, more ancient than the rock strata of the 
Rockies, the Alps, or even Mount Everest 
himself, so the geologists inform us, after 
their recent studies of the complicated and 
fascinating geology of the region. 1 

1 For the general geological history, written as far as 
may be in non-technical language, with maps and illus¬ 
trations, see “The Geological History of New York 
State/’ by William H. Miller, N. Y. State Museum 
Bulletin No. 168, Albany, N. Y., 1913. Other bulletins 
give more detailed studies of U. S. Geological Survey 
Quadrangle areas within the region. 


32 



Packing up 








THE APPROACH 






















THE APPROACH 


A FTER an early breakfast (Saturday, 
August ii) we walked leisurely, 
resting frequently, for about three 
and a half hours, when we reached Cold River 
Dam, a large one, formerly used in lumbering 
the locality, passing on the way the party 
which had overtaken and passed us below two 
days previously, now returning from their 
climb up Seward. On a small hill to the west 
of the dam stood the abandoned lumber camp, 
in a fair state of preservation, in it an old 
stove, table, benches and a bunk, with some 
odds and ends of its former occupancy strewn 
about. Alvin took a swim in the pool at the 
foot of the dam spillway, while I prepared 
lunch. Mount Santanoni, with Panther, his 
brother peak, lay before us, with rolling coun¬ 
try, many ridges and much distance to the 
35 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


foot of them. We did not wonder that Mar¬ 
shall had had a hard climb to Panther Peak 
from this point. It looked like good country 
to get lost in. On studying the map we con¬ 
cluded that it would be easier to make our 
approach and climb up the valley of the brook 
on their farther sides, the brook descending 
northerly from near Bradley Pond and flow¬ 
ing into Duck Hole. 

Again we proceeded up the trail, following 
the Adirondack Mountain Club blue spot 
markers, which we found to have been well 
placed all the way through, particularly at 
every turn off and blind spot. After a while 
we came into a well traveled tote road, ap¬ 
parently in use but a few years ago, for it was 
in good condition. 

In these woods, tote road is the term used to 
designate a road used to haul supplies over 
into a lumber camp. It is laid out over grades 
as low as may be found, toward its objective, 
avoiding swampy places as much as possible. 
Where a swamp or low place or brook must 
36 


THE APPROACH 

be crossed, corduroy construction is used— 
logs laid down, close together, like the flooring 
of a bridge, on large logs used as stringers 
where necessary. Sometimes this corduroy 
construction will extend for miles, built up 
on timber cribs over rocky places and by the 
sides of streams, great trunks of white and 
yellow birch, beech, maple and cedar being 
used for the road bed, sometimes soft wood 
tree trunks—spruce, hemlock, balsam—where 
hard wood is scarce. In one place we walked 
a corduroy road for a half mile, in swampy 
cedar country, stepping on cedar logs six to 
twelve inches in diameter—cedar will not float 
down stream, and has no value, here, because 
of the cost of getting it out. Supplies are 
drawn over the road to the lumber camp in 
heavy, wide tired wagons, by horses of im¬ 
pressive weight. A tote road may be identi¬ 
fied by its easier grades, its more solid con¬ 
struction, and by the deep ruts in the softer 
places, made by the wide tired wagon wheels. 

A draw road is the term used to designate 

37 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


a road over which the soft wood market logs 
are drawn in winter, the road being previously 
flooded or sprinkled with water and frozen, 
to give easy traction, from the skids to water, 
there to await the break up of ice and spring 
freshets, so that they may be driven down, 
through ponds and lakes in channels between 
booms—floating logs, held together, at their 
ends, by chains—and on down their outlets, 
and the rivers, to the mills, where they are 
made into pulp and paper, at intervals on the 
upper streams log dams being built to hold 
back sufficient water to let out, when needed, 
to assist in making the drive down stream. A 
draw road may be identified by the presence 
of skids alongside it, its steeper grades, its cor¬ 
duroy logs laid wider apart than in a tote road, 
for sleigh runners rather than wheels, and its 
down hill, toward water, direction. If you 
get lost follow roads down hill—you will come 
out somewhere. 

Snake paths will be found farther up hill, 
above the skids, the latter being timber cribs 

38 


THE APPROACH 

upon which the market logs, about four¬ 
teen feet in length, are piled, each bearing, 
on its ends, the mark of the contractor who cut 
it so that the logs may be identified and tallied 
when they reach the mills below after their 
long journey in the spring. Two men fell the 
trees, the trunks of those to be cut having been 
previously marked with a round, white spot, 
cut through the bark by tapping a hollow steel 
spotter with a mallet. In a few minutes the 
crosscut saw will bring crashing down a tree 
that may have stood for a half century or more. 
The lopper then cuts off the limbs, using a 
double bitted axe—one side kept sharp for 
cutting, the other duller, used for grubbing 
roots. Using a pole of proper length as a 
measure the tree trunk is sawed into market 
lengths. A horse is driven to the spot, with 
two or three short chains dragging from the 
whiffletree behind him, each chain having a 
spike at its end. The spikes are then driven 
by a mallet into the market logs, near their 
ends, and the horse proceeds to “snake” them 
39 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


down a little path to the nearest skidway—the 
open space above and leading to the skids— 
down which they are rolled to and piled up 
on the skids convenient for loading upon sleigh 
bobs in winter. Snake paths are not marked 
by blazed trees. They start out into the 
woods from the skidways, wind in and out 
snake fashion, and end nowhere. They give 
but little assistance in woods traveling. In 
fact they are usually very confusing. 

We walked on with not much to see except 
the hard wood trees by the road on either side. 
While resting we noticed a large signboard 
nailed to a tree trunk containing the lettered 
information “15 miles”—nothing else to in¬ 
dicate whence or whither. Alvin made the 
sign more of a joke by marking over it, with a 
pencil, “Speed Limit,” and under it, “per 
hour.” Only a motor car of the quite famil¬ 
iar type could be expected to need the warn¬ 
ing—even it might develop rattles in travel¬ 
ing the road. Farther on we could see water 
down to our left, and our map indicated it as 
40 


THE APPROACH 

Mountain Pond, with Seymour Mountain 
rising to the west. After more packing we 
came to where another tote road led into ours 
from the northwest, and here we found some 
lettered Adirondack Mountain Club signs. 
One pointed in the direction from which we 
had come and read, “Cold River Dam 5 
miles, Shattuck’s Clearing 10 miles, Long 
Lake Open Camp 21Y2 miles, Northville 120 
milesanother pointed to the right and read, 
“Cold River Open Camp V2 mile, Moose 
Pond 5% miles, Lake Placid 15% miles.” 
We decided to go on to Cold River Open 
Camp, and shortly reached it, finding a new 
open camp, erected, as the sign indicated, by 
the State Conservation Commission. On the 
floor of the open camp, at one end, was a good 
bed of fresh balsam; at the other end were a 
table, benches, some cooking utensils, and a 
small supply of sugar, flour and butter, left 
by recent occupants. We cooked unleavened 
bread in the fry pan and some slices of bacon 
over a fire in the built-up stone fireplace in 
4i 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


front of the camp, finishing off with raisins, 
sweet chocolate and tea. Soon we relaxed 
into deep sleep. 

We forgot the next day was Sunday having 
in mind that it was Saturday. In woods trav¬ 
eling you reckon from “the day we camped by 
the swamp,” or from “the day we caught the 
big trout,” and are very apt to lose a day. A 
good way to remember is to carry along a 
small dry stick in the pack—one cut with a 
hatchet out of seasoned cedar and whittled 
smooth with a jackknife will do—cedar seems 
to have more medicine in it than other woods 
for this particular purpose—making a cere¬ 
mony each morning after breakfast, or after 
the evening meal before the backlog fire, of 
cutting a notch in the stick for the day, a 
longer one for Sundays—only do not forget 
the ceremony. 

After breakfast we scouted, and found that 
the outlet from Preston Ponds and Duck Hole 
flowed into Cold River close by the place 
where stood the open camp we occupied. A 
42 


THE APPROACH 


tote road led, apparently, toward Duck Hole, 
but we remembered what the two young men 
with many maps had told us of the lumber cut¬ 
tings and beaver dams, and were somewhat shy 
of it. The ridge to the south of the outlet 
looked as though covered with hard wood tim¬ 
ber, and we decided to pack up the outlet in 
the hardwood alongside it. 

Shortly Kim ran up our back trail, and 
barked, and we heard voices. Three young 
men, natives, came along by the camp, carry¬ 
ing fishing rods, and one of them, in addition, 
a double-barrelled shot gun. Their spokes¬ 
man said they were from Saranac Lake; that 
they were going trout fishing at Duck Hole, 
and in the brook which flowed into it from the 
south—the brook coming down the valley 
which we had decided upon as our approach 
to Panther Peak and Santanoni; that the tote 
road up the north side of the outlet flowing 
into the river, near the open camp, led to 
the foot of Duck Hole; and that there was an 
old tote road leading up our objective valley. 
43 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 

They went on their way, we packed, and 
after a short walk up the tote road came to the 
dam at the foot of Duck Hole, crossed it, 
found a trail leading up to the right of the 
valley, and after a short distance down again 
to the old tote road, alongside the stream. 
After about a mile the road disappeared, hav¬ 
ing been washed out by spring freshets. We 
got off on a side draw road to the west for a 
short distance, but soon realized our mistake 
by the character and uphill direction of the 
road and returned to the brook, where we saw 
the three young men fishing. Their spokes¬ 
man could not give us much of any informa¬ 
tion about the valley above us. We con¬ 
cluded to continue up, keeping the brook in 
sight. For some time we walked old, rotten 
corduroy and pushed through alders. We 
took to the bed of the brook, walking up the 
stones, and ere long hunger took possession of 
us, with the result that we stopped and cooked 
a pot of oatmeal. After a rest we looked at 
what we could see of the valley through the 
44 


THE APPROACH 


trees and concluded we had gone far enough 
up to be in a good situation from which to 
make our climb. A little ways farther we 
came to a beaver dam, put up the tent close by 
the brook below it, made a fair balsam bed, 
and cooked a pot of macaroni, flavoring it 
with beef cubes, for supper. Alvin then went 
fishing and I scouted for a few minutes, re¬ 
turning with meagre information except the 
conclusion that we had pushed up the valley 
nearer our objective peak than we had 
thought. Kim did not go with me on the 
scout but stretched his tired length on the 
blankets. He eats rice and cereals, but re¬ 
fuses the dog biscuit carried for him. During 
the night the rain came. 

We slept late the following morning listen¬ 
ing to the raindrops falling on the tent and be¬ 
lieving we were enjoying Sunday morning 
naps. After breakfast, cooked between mists, 
I wrote up the journal, discovering that we 
had lost a day and that yesterday was Sunday. 
On looking at the hills to the east and after 
45 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


studying the map we concluded to wait for 
clear weather for our climb, and after making 
it, to pack over the ridge between us and Pres¬ 
ton Ponds, hoping to go through one of the 
visible saddles in the ridge, if we could find it. 

Alvin had found an old rubber hunting 
shoe, with leather top, at the Cold River Dam 
lumber camp, had cut off the leather, and 
brought it with him. He is now busy cutting 
out of it, in spiral fashion, a thong for the bow 
of his fire set. Kim is sleeping the sleep of a 
tired doggy. 

In the afternoon we tried flies on the pools 
above and below the beaver dam, catching 
four. Alvin used a cut birch pole, and I the 
small pocket rod, which proved to be too stiff 
because of the numerous ferrules for its short 
length. It broke twice, necessitating burn¬ 
ing out the wood in the ferrule, whittling 
the broken end to fit into it, and wedging it in, 
re-tying the snake guides, and covering the 
job with pitch, obtained by pricking with a 
46 


THE APPROACH 


knife blade one of the little blisters on a live 
balsam tree, to keep the water out. We 
cooked the trout for supper and wished we 
had caught more. 


47 



SANTANONI 






SANTANONI 


I T had cleared by morning and we arose 
early, getting away at seven o’clock for 
our climb. We took the smaller pail, in 
its denim bag for protection from soot, and a 
bag containing oatmeal, with the salt and 
sugar added to it, raisins and chocolate, for 
lunch, Alvin carrying it in one of the brown 
duffle bags strapped in the shoulder harness 
on his back out of the way so as to leave his 
arms free for the climb. We followed the 
tote road up the brook, until we found it so 
overgrown and washed away that we took to 
the stones of the brook bed. After about a 
mile and a half of this going, we reached a 
point to the east of Panther Peak, and could 
see that the greater part of our two thousand 
feet climb lay steeply in front of us. A draw 
road up a small feeder brook gave us fair 
5 1 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


walking for a little ways, then we took to the 
brush. The climb was as steep as it had 
looked. By eleven o’clock we had reached 
the summit of the little peak that lies to the 
northeast of Panther Peak. Down below us, 
to the north, we obtained a good view of Cold 
River valley, up which we had come, and 
above it, a little to the east of north, past the 
east side of Sawtooth Mountain, lay Lake 
Placid, backed by Whiteface Mountain. We 
reserved looking overmuch in other directions 
until we should reach the summit of Santa- 
noni. The atmosphere began to be cloud 
filled, and we regretfully realized that our 
views were not to be the clear ones we had 
hoped for. 

On reaching the summit of Panther Peak, 
Alvin found a tin cartridge box sealed with 
adhesive tape on which was written “Regis¬ 
ter.” On opening it he found some sheets of 
note paper upon which were written five 
names, the first two bearing the date of Au¬ 
gust 5, 1921, and the latter three being Herbert 
52 


SANTANONI 


Clark, George Marshall and Robert Mar¬ 
shall, under the date of August 21, 1921. Al¬ 
vin signed our names, following them with 
the date. 

The summit of Santanoni lay about a mile 
and a half to the south of us, with much moun¬ 
tain balsam between. Through it we pushed, 
pulled and crawled, until we reeked of bal¬ 
sam, handling, pulling, tasting, falling on it, 
its aroma filling our nostrils, its needles get¬ 
ting down our necks, its black stain remaining 
on our hands. An old survey line had been 
cut, many years ago, along the crest and we 
found several white cloth game preserve signs 
tacked to trees along it. So old was the line, 
however, that it did not help us very much so 
far as traveling was concerned. In one of 
the saddles we stopped for lunch. We tried 
pressing the water out of moss, but soon gave 
it up, as what remained of daylight was valu¬ 
able, and our hands were so blackened with 
balsam pitch that what water was pressed out 
into our cups was dark in color and pitchy as 
53 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


to taste. We lunched on dry oatmeal, on the 
theory that it would swell up inside of us, as 
the parched and powdered Indian corn did 
inside the Indians who ate it, and surrender 
to us its food value—the theory worked, it sur¬ 
rendered. We finished off with raisins and 
chocolate. After a rest of an hour we pushed 
on our way, finally reaching the summit. 

I agree with Marshall as to the beauty of 
the views, and that they are worth any trouble 
to get. Never before, from any Adirondack 
peak, have I seen such a broad expanse of wild 
country. On the northwest side lay Cold 
River valley, with some evidence of lumber¬ 
ing in it, however, backed by Mounts Sey¬ 
mour and Seward, with their ridges; to the 
west, miles on miles of tree tops, with many 
ponds and lakes glimmering out of them; to¬ 
ward the northeast Bradley Pond, above it 
Henderson Mountain, with dark Lake Hen¬ 
derson visible beyond his southern ridges; 
more to the right, down the long wooded slope 
of the mountain, tiny Lake Andrew and larger 
54 


SANTANONI 


Sanford; and farther away, over Mount Hen¬ 
derson, the big peaks—Macomb, Dix, Hay¬ 
stack, Marcy, Colden with his slides, and Mc¬ 
Intyre, now nearer than when we last saw 
them from Blue Mountain. Particularly im¬ 
pressive was the view through Indian Pass, 
with the great shoulder cliff of Wallface on 
its northwest side, and on straight through it, 
the Cascade Notch. 

Applying the standard as to beauty of views 
I find myself agreeing with Marshall that the 
views from Santanoni are excelled, of a cer¬ 
tainty, only by those from Haystack, possibly 
by those from Nipple Top; this because, in 
addition to the wildness, the latter peaks give 
more beautiful near views—from Hay¬ 
stack, rocky Panther Gorge close on one side, 
and Basin and the white sided Gothics close 
by on the other side—from Nipple Top, 
massive Dix to the east, Elk Lake in its light 
green valley to the south, the outspread great 
range on the northwest. Santanoni stands de¬ 
tached, in the midst of vast woods, with no 
55 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


other mountains close to him—an outpost be¬ 
tween the big range and the lake country. 
The immensity of the region impresses one 
more from Santanoni than from any other 
peak. 

Lowering skies threatened a shortening of 
daylight, and rain. We discovered a trail 
leading down to the east, toward Santanoni 
Brook, and were afterwards informed this 
trail followed down the brook, coming out on 
the road leading north from Tahawus Post 
Office to Tahawus Club. We dreaded the re¬ 
turn through the tough mountain balsam to 
Panther Peak, and studied the map, compass 
in hand, and the mountain side to the north¬ 
east of us. We decided to go down on a 
northeast course, which would mean walking 
over at least two large ridges extending down 
from Panther Peak fanwise, aiming to strike 
the head of our brook valley north of Bradley 
Pond at the circumference of the fan. A 
misty rain overtook us, depositing its drops on 
the foliage. As we brushed against the bushes 
56 


SANTANONI 


and the trunks of saplings the rain drops 
shook off on to our clothing. After about 
two hours we came to an old tumble-down 
lumber camp on our brook, above the place 
where we had left it to begin our climb. 
We arrived at camp at six o’clock, wet 
through to the hips, but happy. 

I started the fire, Alvin stripped to the waist 
and cut a large supply of fire wood, and soon 
a pot of macaroni was bubbling. I stepped 
up to the beaver dam to fool with some soap, 
and on returning to the tent, slipped on the wet 
grass, and fell into the brook, getting soaked 
to the shoulders. Great gleeful shouts from 
Alvin! As I stood by the fire letting the 
water run off my clothes, Kim pushed a sym¬ 
pathetic nose against my leg and began to lick 
some of the water off for me, wagging his tail 
meanwhile. In a few minutes we were both 
stripped and in the brook for a good bath and 
swim. We made a huge backlog fire and 
were soon into dry underclothing, eating our 
supper to the patter of rain drops on the tent 
57 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


above us. Contentedly we tucked the blan¬ 
kets about us—the end of a perfect day—San- 
tanoni climbed, the goal of many years ambi¬ 
tion among Adirondack peaks. 

In the morning more rain, and some long 
naps under the warm blankets. While cook¬ 
ing breakfast a pileated woodpecker came 
close to camp—the second one I have seen— 
and hammered into the trunk of a standing 
dead tree, getting his breakfast—a good view, 
showing clearly his pointed, scarlet crest, long 
neck with white stripe, long bill, and large 
body, about fifteen inches in length from tip 
of crest to end of tail feathers. We decided 
to wash our clothes and put our duffle in order. 
Soon the welcome sun appeared between 
drifting clouds and shone on our drying cloth¬ 
ing. A white throat trilled its plaintive song 
near by. By noon it had cleared. We re¬ 
solved to move. After packing up we went 
over to a little cleared space to the west of the 
brook and looked at the ridge over which we 

58 


SANTANONI 


had decided to go, and the saddle in it we 
would try for. It lay due east from us. 

Up the old tote road along the brook we 
went, and after a few hundred yards found a 
draw road leading off to the east in the direc¬ 
tion of our objective saddle. We followed it 
and it continued eastward, until it ended high 
up on the side of the ridge, and there we were 
fortunate enough to find a well traveled deer 
path leading on directly up to and through our 
saddle—a pretty spot, with fern covered floor, 
rocky sides, and shaded by tall, first growth 
spruces. The descent on the other side was 
steep, through the big spruce. Soon we saw 
down below us, through the tree tops, a body 
of water. In a few minutes we came to the 
top of a cliff with a sheer drop off of fifty or 
sixty feet. We worked our way carefully 
around to the right and down at the end of 
the cliff, and ere long stood on a little, gravelly 
beach on the shore of Upper Preston Pond— 
a beautiful sheet of water, with wooded shore 
59 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


lines, some of it black timber, standing amidst 
light green tree tops, Mac Naughton Moun¬ 
tain overlooking it across to the east from the 
beach. 

Following the shore line to the southeast— 
the trail proved to be on the other side of the 
pond—we soon came to an outlying log cabin 
camp of the Tahawus Club, the pond being in 
the preserve of the Club. It was unoccupied, 
but we espied a boat approaching the landing 
place in front of the camp. In a few min¬ 
utes two middle aged men, both protected 
from the cold northwest wind by black rubber 
coats, rowed up to the landing, greeted us, 
and gave us the time from their watches. 
One of them asked us whence we had come. 
We pointed to the saddle in the ridge above 
the cliff. The elder one’s eyes glistened, and 
he said he wished he were young enough to 
go through the woods as we were going. The 
other said he had climbed Santanoni by way 
of the trail up Santanoni Brook, and agreed 
that the views therefrom were among the 
60 



Upper Preston Pond 












SANTANONI 


best from any of the peaks. They went into 
the cabin. Again we took to walking around 
the shore of the pond, and struck bad going— 
we should have gone up higher, as we had 
been told to do, by one of the men—rocks, 
down timber, and brush—but patiently we 
worked through it, finally reaching the end 
of the pond at the point from which the trail 
led off to Lake Henderson. 

A short distance on the trail we met a lone 
traveler with a pack basket on his back, a 
blanket roll tied on top of it, a stick for a staff 
in his right hand, in his left a smoke blackened 
tin pail containing a fry pan and a camera. 
Kim barked vociferously at him. He asked 
us how far it was to the pond and if he would 
be permitted to put up for the night on its 
shore. We told him we did not have any¬ 
thing to do with it, but did not bdieve anyone 
would object if no damage were done. He 
said he was on his way around Preston Ponds 
and on to Ampersand. 

After a slight rise on the well cut trail 
61 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


through a rocky pass we descended, came to a 
brook, crossed it several times on logs with 
hand rails up alongside, and soon saw a sign 
board pointing to a trail leading to our left, 
marked “Indian Pass.” This trail we fol¬ 
lowed and shortly found ourselves on a stream 
running south, which we knew, from looking 
at our map, to be Indian Pass Brook. Soon 
we stopped in the hardwood on its west bank. 

The tent was quickly set up. We are get¬ 
ting quite proficient in team work. On stop¬ 
ping we choose a place for the tent, selecting 
as level and soft a spot as possible. Alvin un¬ 
straps his pack and hands me the hatchet. I 
cut a tent pole, six stakes, two upright 
crotched poles, with cross bar, for cooking 
purposes, and two “wannigans”—inverted 
crotches—by which the pails are suspended 
over the fire. I stake the two rear corners of 
the tent, Alvin places the pole in position, with 
the two front ropes over its crotch, and I then 
adjust the two ropes in position, drive stakes in, 
tie the ropes to them and stake the front tent 
62 


SANTANONI 


corners. Together we gather balsam and Al¬ 
vin makes the bed, shingling the fronds from 
head to foot—unless it is too dark, or we are 
too tired to gather balsam, when we let the for¬ 
est floor take our bodies as it is, after raking 
off sticks and leveling it somewhat with our 
hands and the back of the hatchet, making hol¬ 
lows in the woods floor for hips and should¬ 
ers. We bring pails of gravel from the brook 
and place it in a sheet of several inches thick¬ 
ness on the woods duff, upon which to build 
our fire. Then the crotched poles are driven 
in, the cross bar placed in position above the 
fireplace, notches cut in the suspended “wan- 
nigans” to take our pail handles, the fire is 
started, with the aid of birch bark and small 
dead branches of spruce or hemlock, and the 
water in the pails is soon boiling, ready for 
tea, rice, oatmeal, pea soup or macaroni. 
Meantime, as soon as the poncho is spread 
over the balsam and the blankets laid over it, 
Kim seeks them, and we cover him up to his 
busy little black nose with the ends of the 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


blankets—a tired, contented doggy sigh as 
soon as this is done. There he remains until 
our evening meal is ready and we sit at the 
front of the tent eating it, when he comes out 
from under the blankets and sits beside us, re¬ 
minding us, occasionally, by placing his raised 
paw on one of our arms, that he too is hungry. 


64 


Indian Pass 


“But, behold, when he was got now hard by the 
hill, it seemed so high, and also that side of it that 
was next the way-side did hang so much over, that 
Christian was afraid to venture further, lest the 
hill should fall on his head; wherefore there he stood 
still, and wotted not what to do.” 

—Pilgrim’s Progress. 



INDIAN PASS 


A FTER breakfast next morning 
(Thursday, August 16) we left our 
tent to explore Indian Pass. The 
trail was well traveled giving us good walking. 
We soon came to a fork where we saw some 
signs nailed to trees—the Conservation Com¬ 
mission’s signs and markers. The one point¬ 
ing up the brook read, “Indian Pass 3 miles, 
Adirondack Lodge 8 miles, Lake Placid 20 
miles,” the sign indicating round blue trail 
markers on this trail; the sign pointing up the 
trail which led off to the right read, “Flowed 
Land 4% miles, Lake Colden 5% miles, Mt. 
Marcy 9% miles,” the sign indicating red 
trail markers. We went on up the brook, 
every little ways, particularly at blind places 
on the trail, coming upon a round blue trail 
marker nailed to a tree trunk. 

67 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 

Shortly the valley narrowed up and we 
caught glimpses of the Wallface Mountain 
cliff, to the left. A turn in the trail and there 
was a wall tent and tarp, with a birch bark 
sign up on a front pole, upon which was 
printed “New York State Conservation Com¬ 
mission, Cruising Side Camp No. i.” Its oc¬ 
cupants were not at home so we proceeded on 
our way. The trail soon became very steep, 
leading around and among immense boulders 
which had fallen into the pass from its steep, 
converging sides. We came to a side path, 
followed it to the edge of a small cliff and the 
full majesty of the chasm came into view. 
Up the pass, across from us, rising sheer for a 
thousand feet, was the rocky side of Wallface. 
Below in heaps lay great masses of piled up 
boulders—many larger than a house, some 
poised in apparently unstable positions, with 
cavities underneath, a few crowned with trees 
—whence they had tumbled down from off 
the front of Wallface’s massive chest. To our 
right the wooded slope of the McIntyre range 
68 



Santanoni and Panther Peak above Henderson’s Crest, from Indian Pass 





INDIAN PASS 


rose at an angle of forty-five degrees. To the 
southwest, down the pass, above Henderson’s 
crest, lay Santanoni, spread out across the hor¬ 
izon from its summit to Panther Peak—a 
beautiful view. 1 We took pictures with the 
little cameras we carried on our belts, but felt 
that no camera could do justice to the views— 
and it does not. We then went on to the 
height of land, or rather jumbled up pile of 
boulders, and climbed one of them for a view 
down through the wooded, northern end of 
the pass. 

Returning to camp we discovered that there 
was a Conservation Commission open camp 
erected across the brook but a short distance 
above our tent. We cooked oatmeal for 
lunch, and after a rest decided to go on to 
Flowed Land. From the fork in the trail 
above our camp the trail went over the south¬ 
ern shoulder of the McIntyre range leading 
into Calamity Brook Trail which comes up 
from the Tahawus Club, some distance above 


1 Illustration. 


69 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 

the dam. The trail was steep in places and 
the Adirondack miles of it proved to be long 
ones as usual—something must be the matter 
with their measuring outfits. At two places 
on the trail, one just as we had crested the 
south ridge of the McIntyre range and the 
other on walking the old grass covered cordu¬ 
roy around marshy Calamity Pond, the faint, 
aromatic odor of sweet grass was borne to our 
nostrils, bringing memories of Indian baskets 
at home and the perfume given off by them 
after rainy weather in summer. On and near 
the trail in the marsh at the edge of the pond 
we saw many closed gentians, their deep blue 
petals folded tightly together. When we had 
reached the Henderson Monument—grim 
cenotaph of the accidental shooting at that 
spot of David Henderson in 1845—the fast 
descending sun brought realization of the fact 
that we could not reach Opalescent River 
Open Camp at the foot of Lake Colden before 
dark, which we had hopes of doing, so we de¬ 
cided to make our overnight stop at Flowed 
70 


INDIAN PASS 


Land. This we soon reached, beautiful Col- 
den, with his slides—the Scalped One, as the 
Indians designated him—and Avalanche Pass, 
in view across the water. On the shore a 
small army shelter tent was set up, with 
duffle strewn about it. We espied a boat some 
distance from the shore with two occupants, 
fishing. Darkness was nearly upon us. We 
had no time to find and clear a space for the 
tent in the spruce and balsam covered shore, 
so we pitched the tent in the trail, gathering 
and placing a little balsam to take the curse 
off the bed. A tired trio we were—the end of 
our hardest day. 


7 * 


* 


The Big Range 

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
whence cometh my strength.” 


—Psalms. 
































FLOWED LAND 











































' 









FLOWED LAND 


A FTER arising (Friday, August 17), 
on going down to the water’s edge 
I heard a distant halloo, and look¬ 
ing up espied three figures on the clear, sunlit 
summit of Mount Colden. At first I thought 
they were trees, but reflected that trees as tall 
as the figures I saw do not grow on top of bare 
rock, or out of small mountain balsams. Soon 
the three figures changed position and I knew 
some ambitious souls had arisen early to reach 
that summit at seven o’clock in the morning. 
Their principle of mountain climbing is cor¬ 
rect—the earlier one gets to the top the clearer 
the atmosphere and the fewer clouds. Some¬ 
times we would start for a peak with a clear, 
sunlit sky, and by the time we arrived at the 
top, after two or three hours or more of 
climbing, would be looking through a cloudy, 
77 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


hazy atmosphere. The clearest atmosphere 
is apt to follow a storm, particularly if the 
storm—they usually come from the southwest 
—is blown away by a cold wind from the 
northwest. 

The occupants of the army shelter tent 
proved to be two lads from Saranac Lake Vil¬ 
lage, who had been in camp a week, one of 
them a former Boy Scout. They had caught 
some trout and gave us one—at least a pound 
in weight—for breakfast. It did taste good 
to us, after our simple woods fare! While 
we were cooking the trout a man, two women, 
and a boy, with packs, came in over the trail 
around Flowed Land from Lake Colden. 
The man said they had come up from Taha- 
wus Post Office by Calamity Brook Trail, and 
after spending several days on the shore of 
Lake Colden, were returning by Opalescent 
River Trail. The quick eye of one of the 
women noted the fact that Alvin was brown¬ 
ing the trout in the fry pan over a very small 
fire—mostly coals, very little flame. She 

78 


FLOWED LAND 


said, “See what a little fire he’s using!” I in¬ 
ferred that some of her party had been trying 
to cook over bonfires, as so many people try to 
do, instead of the little stick fire, which pro¬ 
duces a flame but slightly larger than that of 
the gas range at home—sticks no larger than a 
pencil, the dead branches sticking out, below 
the live ones, from the trunks of balsams, 
spruces and hemlocks. Gather a full supply, 
all you are going to need; break them into 
short lengths, and place them by the side of 
the fire. Feed them in, from time to time, so 
as to keep your small flame just where, and as 
hot, as you wish it. This for the quick cook¬ 
ing fire. It takes larger wood, preferably 
hardwood, and more time, to develop a bed of 
coals that will glow with little or no flame, and 
give ofif sufficient heat for cooking. Our call¬ 
ers bade us good bye and went on their way. 

While we were strapping our packs two 
young men came up the Calamity Brook 
Trail, carrying large pack baskets, with tent 
and blanket rolls on top. They said they had 
79 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


been the occupants of the cruising camp of 
the Conservation Commission which we had 
passed up Indian Pass Brook; that they had 
broken camp, and were now on their way to 
the main cruisers’ headquarters on the west 
shore of Lake Colden. One of them told us 
that the Commission would not take the lum¬ 
ber company’s estimate of the amount of the 
standing soft wood timber in the tract which 
includes a large part of the surrounding coun¬ 
try, taken over recently by the State, largely 
through the efforts of former Commissioner 
George D. Pratt and his secretary Warwick 
S. Carpenter, in spite of opposition from the 
Tahawus Club people, who wished to keep 
this region as a part of their preserve, and that 
the Commission’s foresters were now making 
a joint timber cruise of the tract, with the for¬ 
esters of the lumber company, to determine 
the kind and quantity of the soft wood. He 
said that some of the cruisers, together with a 
fire warden stationed there, were at the Lake 
Colden camp, whither he and his companion 
80 


FLOWED LAND 


were bound; that they had cut a trail this sum¬ 
mer up Mount Colden, starting from the east 
side of the lake opposite the camp; and that 
some of them had made the climb by this trail 
in an hour and a quarter. On mentioning the 
fact that we had seen three persons on the 
summit at seven o’clock he informed us that 
some of the party were cruising on Mount 
Colden and that the three we saw were prob¬ 
ably some of these cruisers who had made the 
climb on their way to work. Having been in 
the woods all summer, with not many visitors, 
our new callers seemed pleased to have some¬ 
one to talk with. They invited us to call upon 
them at their Lake Colden camp. We gladly 
accepted the invitation. Learning that we 
were going around Flowed Land and up 
Opalescent River, they offered to take our 
packs across Flowed Land in the boat, and 
leave them at the landing up the inlet, which 
they did. 

There were several red squirrels about our 
overnight camp site looking for food scraps. 
81 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


Kim had a great time chasing them up trees. 
One he put up a small birch standing so far 
from other trees that the nervous squirrel 
could not jump out of it, and it was fun to 
watch Kim stand at the foot of the birch and 
point him, while the red squirrel scolded an¬ 
grily back, body shaking, curved tail quiver¬ 
ing. It was a long time before Kim’s interest 
waned and the red squirrel could leave the 
tree. Evidently a Fox Terrier in this country 
is of as much interest to the red squirrel as the 
latter is to Kim. 

We took the trail down the shore of Flowed 
Land to view Hanging Spear Falls which the 
sign indicated as being a mile and a quarter 
distant. Soon we came to the dam at the foot 
of Flowed Land, built years ago across Opal¬ 
escent River to provide a sufficient head of 
water, flooding the land above it, to turn into 
and down Calamity Brook for lumbering pur¬ 
poses below, and recognized it as the place 
from which Doctor Andzulatis, a great Adi- 
82 


FLOWED LAND 


rondack lover, had taken, years ago, the pic¬ 
ture of Flowed Land, with Mount McIntyre 
in the distance, which his daughter had sent 
us for a recent Christmas remembrance. We 
went down the east side of the river, the trail 
leading along the edge of a gorge similar to 
the one above Flowed Land, but larger. 
Soon we came to an observation point from 
which we obtained a view of the falls—a 
pretty sight, with a rainbow visible in the 
mist, over the dark pool, at the bottom. Opal¬ 
escent River is the most beautiful stream in 
the Adirondacks. Both above and below 
Flowed Land its gorges, flumes and falls, and 
its clear water, revealing, reflecting, heighten¬ 
ing the varying iridescent colors—blue, green, 
bronze—of the smooth worn rock of its bed, 
leave nothing to be desired for beauty in a 
mountain stream. It has been happily named. 

We returned, walked over the trail around 
the west shore of Flowed Land, came to the 
small cliff at the foot of Lake Colden, with the 

83 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


ladder down it, down which I carried Kim, 
and went a short distance to the open camp on 
Opalescent River where both Kim and I had 
been before. It was unoccupied, but a Baker 
tent stood near and a man tending fire there 
said that the night before about forty persons 
had camped in and around the open camp— 
parties which had come in from the north, 
from Adirondack Lodge way south through 
Avalanche Pass, or from the south, up the 
Calamity Brook or Opalescent River Trails, 
for the Marcy or McIntyre climbs, or which 
had returned from the latter climbs and were 
on their way out. We went down to the boat 
landing at the head of Flowed Land, shoul¬ 
dered our packs, which had been left there by 
the cruisers, and walked up the river to a se¬ 
cluded spot I had occupied before in 1915 and 
1916, where we found the remains of our old 
camp fire seat and some of our tent pegs still 
standing. We reached the camp site tired 
and hungry—feelings always to be associated 
with that spot, of which more will be told 
84 


FLOWED LAND 


later. A little work and we had the best 
camp so far on the trip, with a plentiful sup¬ 
ply of balsam for the bed. For the remainder 
of the day we rested. 


85 














MCINTYRE AND COLDEN 







McIntyre and colden 


T HE sun shone brightly when we 
arose next morning, promising good 
views from the summit of McIn¬ 
tyre, our day’s objective. On the way to the 
cruisers’ cabin on Lake Colden where the trail 
up the mountain began, we stopped at the 
Baker tent we had seen the night before and 
found occupying it a man from Amsterdam, 
New York. We exchanged cards, the man 
writing his name on a piece of wrapping pa¬ 
per, I writing mine on a piece of birch bark. 
He proved to be a seasoned Adirondacker of 
about sixty summers who was in camp with 
a minister, whom he said had spent many sum¬ 
mers hereabouts. The latter had left camp 
that morning for Tahawus Club, where, by 
special dispensation of the woods gods, he 
had been allowed to leave his car. He in- 

89 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


tended to go out to Amsterdam the same eve¬ 
ning, occupy his pulpit on the Sabbath, and 
return to camp the same way on Monday. 
Truly the wild spots are getting ever nearer 
to civilization these days—although the ser¬ 
mon may have been better, because of wood¬ 
land flavor. Walking on the trail around the 
west shore of Lake Colden, we found the trail 
which was to lead us up the twenty-three hun¬ 
dred feet of steep mountain slope. 

I had good reason to remember McIntyre. 
In 1915 I had made the climb up this trail 
with Little Squaw and had noted that it fol¬ 
lowed the bed of a brook for some distance up. 
On my next climb the following summer, with 
Doctor Cochrane, I had acquired a plentiful 
supply of woods experience. We started 
from the camp on Lake Colden with confi¬ 
dence, but soon the trail became confusing. 
Shortly we came upon a brook, and I gaily 
said, “Let’s not bother with the trail—it fol¬ 
lows up the brook, and we will come into it 
shortly.” I did not know that Cold Brook 
90 


McIntyre and colden 

also flowed into Lake Colden, near the camp, 
and we had gained seven or eight hundred 
feet elevation before we discovered that we 
were on Cold Brook instead of our trail. We 
resolved to push on up anyway from where 
we were, and did so, working our way up to 
the little black timbered knoll south of Her¬ 
bert, then on through the toughest mountain 
balsam I have ever seen, over Herbert, and on 
up to the summit of McIntyre. We would 
reach an elevation from which we could see 
another height ahead, so close you could al¬ 
most throw a stone to it—but it would take us 
a half hour to crawl the distance. We had 
eight hours behind us when we finally reached 
the top. We returned by the trail, reaching 
camp so tired that we scarce had energy left 
to prepare our evening meal and tumble into 
our blankets. Afterward, from the summit of 
Marcy, we had shaken our fists at McIntyre 
and the doctor had rechristened him, “The 
Wart.” 

In two and a quarter hours, helped out by 
9i 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


some raisins and chocolate and a rest, we 
reached the top, passing two parties descend¬ 
ing and finding another party of seven on the 
summit. We arrived somewhat warm after 
our climb and put on our woolen jackets, 
which we had carried on our belts, to prevent 
being chilled by the cooler air. The atmos¬ 
phere was clear. The view down into Indian 
Pass and of the cliff of Wallface is particu¬ 
larly good, though lumbering across in the 
Scott Pond country and to the north of Indian 
Pass has deprived the view in this direction of 
much of its wildness. To the north across 
the Elba valley beyond the John Brown farm 
and grave, lay Placid, village and lake, with 
steep sided Whiteface in the distance, the 
cleared valley, however, revealing civilization 
somewhat near. Toward Cascade Notch 
much burned country was visible. The best 
view is to the south and southeast—to the right 
down below, Flowed Land; a little nearer and 
more to the left, Lake Colden, margined by 
Mount Colden, with his rocky slides running 
92 


mcintyre and colden 


down and disappearing into Avalanche Pass, 
Caribou Mountain and Pass between; Colden 
in turn topped by the Marcy dome, with Sky¬ 
light and wooded Redfield to the right of him, 
and Gothic visible to the left. The views 
from McIntyre are better than those from 
Marcy, according to the standard of beauty of 
views from the peaks, more evidences of civil¬ 
ization and fire scars being visible to the north 
and northeast from the latter. The close sur¬ 
rounding peaks, hemming Marcy in, deprive 
one of the full sense of his height. McIntyre, 
more detached, his top but two hundred thirty- 
two feet below that of Marcy, brings greater 
realization of elevation, and of the extent of 
the surrounding wild country, particularly off 
his south side. If it were not for the lumber¬ 
ing to the west, the great, open, cultivated val¬ 
ley to the north with the houses and hotel of 
Lake Placid village visible at its foot, and the 
fire scars in the Cascade country, one could 
not wish for wilder and more beautiful views. 

We took pictures and ate our lunch of rai- 

93 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


sins and chocolate. Kim teased for some choc¬ 
olate but would not eat raisins. We broke off 
small bits of chocolate into the palms of our 
hands and placed some raisins with them— 
Kim ate them all. Having thus acquired the 
taste for raisins, Kim afterward ate them 
greedily, after the fashion of a mountaineer. 

Alvin decided to scramble through the bal¬ 
sams to the peak of Herbert, a mile to the 
southwest. He studied the ridge and picked 
out a way where the balsams appeared to be 
thinnest and some ledges were visible. I 
found a comfortable place to lie, on the low 
blueberry bush tops, in the warm sunshine, 
and watched him, and the little white body of 
Kim, disappear and reappear through and 
among the balsam tops, up and over the rocks. 
In thirty-five minutes he stood on the top and 
waved his arms, clearly outlined against the 
sky. The views are like those from Mc¬ 
Intyre, but better, the latter peak blocking off 
the burned Cascade country and most of Elba 
valley. One can look farther into Avalanche 
94 


mcintyre and colden 


Pass to the east and obtain a better view of 
Indian Pass on the west. A little to the south 
of west lies a wild, wooded valley, in which is 
Algonquin Pass with Iroquois Mountain ris¬ 
ing to the south above it. A trail should be 
cut from McIntyre to Herbert. Ere long 
Alvin and Kim returned and we descended. 

We stopped at the cruisers’ camp on Lake 
Colden, were invited into the cabin and shown 
the ground plan of the joint timber cruise 
thereabouts. The cruisers came up in May, 
at which time there was snow on the ground 
in some places, and were just finishing their 
cruise of the Gore around Lake Colden. The 
gore is shaped somewhat like the inserted 
drawing. 

In making their cruise they first established 
base lines along the trails from which they 
ran compass lines ten chains apart, gridiron 
fashion, over the entire tract, blazing trees to 
indicate lines and corners. Then, working in 
pairs, at each corner within the gridiron they 
would describe a circle with a radius of fifty- 
95 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


nine feet, making approximately a quarter 
acre circle, blazing a few trees at the circum¬ 
ference to indicate it. One man then took 
a caliper—a stick marked in inches with an 
arm at right angles at one end and a sliding 
arm projecting in the same direction as the 
end arm—placed its jaws on the sides of each 
live balsam, spruce and hemlock trunk seven 
inches or more in diameter within the circle 
and called off, “balsam ten,” “spruce eight,” 
“hemlock twelve,” as the case might be, mark¬ 
ing the trunks when calipered with a blue 
chalk cross mark. The other man carried the 
tally sheet, vertically indicated thereon in col¬ 
umns, being the kind of trees, horizontally 
their diameters in inches, from seven upwards, 
and marked them down as they were called 
off. Three average sized trees within the cir¬ 
cle, two spruces and one balsam—they found 
hardly any hemlock in the tract—were se¬ 
lected and their heights obtained by angular 
measurement. They also indicated on the 
tally sheet for each circle whether the trees 
96 



Gore around Lake Colden 























McIntyre and colden 


were virgin or second growth and other obser¬ 
vations as to the kind and quality of timber. 
These circles of trees so measured are to be 
used as averages to obtain an estimate of the 
whole amount of standing soft wood within 
the entire tract. We were informed that the 
Conservation Commission acquired title for 
the State to the entire gore in 1920, the stand¬ 
ing soft wood, however, not being included, it 
having been previously conveyed to the lum¬ 
ber company, together with a grant of the 
right to cut and remove it, and that this cruise 
was being made to obtain evidence as to the 
kind and quantity of standing soft wood for 
use in legal proceedings brought by the lum¬ 
ber company to obtain compensation therefor 
and now pending in the State Court of Claims. 

We returned to camp and after supper con¬ 
cluded we had reached the end of another per¬ 
fect day. Mendelssohn’s “Hymn to the For¬ 
est,” in melody and words so aptly expressive 
of the spirit of the woods, came to mind, and 
I sang. 


97 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


“Thou forest broad and sweeping, 

Fair work of nature’s God, 

Of all my joy and weeping, 

The consecrate abode! 

Yon world deceiving ever, 

Murmurs in vain alarms, 

O might I wander never, 

From thy protecting arms. 

Who rightly scans thy beauty, 

A solemn word may read 
Of love, of truth, and duty— 

Of hope in time of need. 

And I have read them often, 

Those words so true and clear, 

What heart that would not soften, 

Thy wisdom to revere? 

Ah! soon must I forsake thee, 

My own, my sheltering home, 

In sorrow soon betake me, 

In yon vain world to roam. 

And there the word recalling, 

Thy solemn lessons teach 
’Mid care and danger falling, 

No harm my soul may reach.” 

After a late breakfast (Sunday, August 19) 
we called on our new acquaintance from Ams¬ 
terdam. Three of the young men from the 
cruisers’ camp were also there and we had a 
good chat on Adirondack lore. The guide 
with our new acquaintance came from Indian 
98 


mcintyre and colden 


Lake Village. He told us Levi Osgood— 
long guardian of Lewey Lake—with nine 
black bear to his credit—died last winter; also 
that someone had built a hotel at King’s Flow, 
near Chimney Mountain. He knew Master 
Brown, of Back Log, and once had taken a 
long woods trip with him, with a pack horse. 

I told of the bear’s visit to Little Squaw in 
camp over in Cedar River valley, several 
summers ago. Little Comrade was with us 
on this trip, and we set up our tents on Grassy 
Brook for two weeks of trout fishing and all 
day walks through the surrounding country. 
One day Little Comrade and I went to climb 
the peak situated a short distance southwest 
of Cellar Mountain, leaving Little Squaw 
reading in camp. Returning at dusk we had 
nearly reached the tents when I gave a hoot 
owl call, which was immediately answered by 
Little Squaw. Soon we heard screams, and 
hastened our footsteps. Arriving at camp 
we saw the pistol, lying on the ground by the 
fire, and Little Squaw, white of face, greeted 
99 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


us with, “I’ve seen a bear!” Lying by the 
fire reading, she had heard a noise from across 
the brook, from which direction the wind 
blew toward camp. Not knowing what the 
noise might be, she had drawn the pistol and 
watched. Soon she saw a black object ap¬ 
proaching through the bushes on the opposite 
side of the brook, and in a few minutes bruin 
came down to the water’s edge, about forty 
feet away. Thinking of our food supply, 
Little Squaw decided to scare him off. Just 
then she heard my call and answered it. She 
stepped to the bank opposite bruin, who 
raised his head, sniffed, and looked her over 
with his beady, curious eyes. Little Squaw 
danced up and down, and screamed at him. 
These antics were too much for bruin, who 
turned tail, hastily clambered up the bank 
and disappeared. We examined his tracks, 
but made no effort to follow him, knowing 
he was going away from the dangerous scent 
of humans as fast as his legs would carry him. 

The young men told us that practically no 


ioo 


McIntyre and colden 


visitors came into this country until the month 
of August, when parties began to come in for 
the climbs and to view the country. 

As the years pass more people are coming 
into these woods, particularly since trails are 
being opened, marked with colored spot mark¬ 
ers instead of former blazes, with signs indi¬ 
cating intersecting trails and giving distances, 
and open camps built. A campaign of edu¬ 
cation lies ahead, however, to teach people 
using them that it is vitally necessary to keep 
as clean, or cleaner, in the woods than at home, 
for you are up in the source streams of many 
water sheds supplying drinking water below. 
Tin cans, if taken, should be buried, refuse 
burned in the camp fire before leaving, not 
forgetting particular, even apparently unnec¬ 
essary, care to put every particle of fire abso¬ 
lutely out. Be greatly overzealous about it. 
Only experience with a fire in the woods will 
bring a realization of how little a spark will 
ignite the woods duff. It is composed en¬ 
tirely of tiny broken twigs, spines, leaves, 
IOI 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


ground up fine. A spark will smoulder in 
it, spread, and run about under tree roots for 
weeks without breaking out into flame. Fires 
here are hard to extinguish and costly to 
woods beauty—witness the country east of 
Dix, Giant, and the Cascade Notch country. 
The efforts of the Adirondack Mountain Club 
in teaching camp sanitation, its members be¬ 
ing asked to clean up open camp sites on 
using or passing them, and leave signs fur¬ 
nished by the Club containing some of the 
simple precautions to be observed, are to be 
commended. After each camping season in 
the fall each camp site should be visited and 
cleaned up, chloride of lime being used, by the 
nearest Club member, fire warden, game pro¬ 
tector or other woods lover, perhaps with a 
check up system, by postal card to the Club’s 
secretary, the nearest fire warden or game pro¬ 
tector, to insure that it has been done. 

Lowering skies kept us in camp before the 
backlog fire, though it cleared enough so that 
we walked up the trail around Lake Colden 


102 


McIntyre and colden 

to see Avalanche Lake and Pass—views not 
to be overlooked. At one place, on a high 
rock above the water on the west side, quick, 
sharp echoes may be obtained from off the 
face of the sheer cliff across the narrow little 
lake. On the east shore above the outlet flow¬ 
ing south white birches may be seen with 
trunks growing parallel to the ground, curv¬ 
ing upward toward their tops—mute evi¬ 
dence of the force and depth of snow slides off 
Colden, towering above. At another spot a 
boulder has crashed down leaving a path be¬ 
hind, tree trunks in the way broken straight 
off. On the east side of Colden, from across 
the lake, may be seen a cleft or chasm, 
seventy-five feet wide near the shore, narrow¬ 
ing as it extends straight up the bare mountain 
side, which the geologists tell us is a weathered 
dike, of unusual size—an intrusion of younger 
igneous rock forced upwards into and through 
an older rock mass, the weaker rock of the 
dike having crumbled and worn away under 
the long continued erosive action of rain, frost 
103 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


and snow slides. 1 We returned to our tent, 
and decided to make for the saddle between 
Marcy and Skylight next day. 

We arose early (Monday, August 20) and 
in an hour and a quarter made the ascent 
of nineteen hundred fifty feet and were 
at the top of Mount Colden at a quarter 
of eight. Not a cloud was in sight and the air 
was clear. The view of Mount Marcy to the 
southeast was impressive. The view over 
Lake Colden and Flowed Land was beautiful, 
more so than the view in the same direction 
from McIntyre, for one sees more of their 
curving wooded shore lines and reflecting 
shadows and the view down the valley is 
wider, Iroquois Mountain and a little of Al¬ 
gonquin Pass being visible to the right. 
Lumbering has deprived the Opalescent River 
valley of a great deal of its former beauty. 
A fine view lay across the north end of the 
peak: the great range piled up to the right 

1 “Geology of the Mount Marcy Quadrangle, Essex 
County, New York,” by James F. Kemp, New York 
State Museum Bulletin, Nos. 229-230, Albany, 1921. 

IO4 


McIntyre and colden 


with Gothic prominent, then across South 
Meadow to the Cascade Notch and Mountain, 
fire scarred; to the left, over the broad Elba 
valley, Lake Placid, backed by Whiteface 
Mountain. At one place down a little from 
the summit we could look straight down Col- 
den’s slides and see a bit of Avalanche Lake 
eighteen hundred feet below, with Caribou 
Mountain and McIntyre, fire scarred on his 
northern ridges, rising steeply for twenty-two 
hundred forty-nine feet above, close by across 
the pass on the northwest. 

We gathered handfuls of blueberries and 
Kim helped himself, eating them fresh from 
the bushes and then rolling, playfully, on the 
thick bush tops in the warm sunshine. We 
descended in a half hour, a steep descent, over 
the new trail to the east shore of the lake. 

As we passed the Opalescent River Open 
Camp we saw that a large party had come in 
and camped there the night before. They 
had seven or eight tiny, individual and two 
person tents, some brown, some blue in color. 
105 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


We saw a hair pin or two inside one of the 
tents. A copper wire had been suspended be¬ 
tween two trees, from which hung neat little, 
waterproofed food bags with tag labels, out of 
the reach of red squirrels. Altogether it was 
a neat outfit and camp. They had gone up 
McIntyre, so our Amsterdam acquaintance in¬ 
formed us. We chatted with the latter gen¬ 
tleman for a while and he accompanied us to 
our camp to look at our outfit. 

He told us a very good method by which to 
start a fire in a pouring rain was to take four 
or five sticks, five feet or so long and about 
four or five inches in diameter, and place them 
in a slanting position, ends on the ground with 
a stone on top to hold them, so,— 



106 



mcintyre and colden 


sides touching, with their other ends project¬ 
ing over the top of the backlog or reflector 
fire, forming a roof over the fire place. He 
showed much interest in Alvin’s friction fire 
set, of the use of which Alvin gave him a dem¬ 
onstration. On leaving us he said that as long 
as his legs would carry him, each August 
would find him up in this country. His pre¬ 
vious Augusts hereabouts had kept him well 
preserved. We wished him many more. 


107 


MARCY 






t 


$ 

















































































































MARCY 


W E packed and started on our steep 
climb up Opalescent River and 
Feldspar Brook Trails to the 
saddle between Marcy and Skylight. At the 
head of the Flume on Opalescent River a log 
bridge had been thrown across, for use in re¬ 
cent lumbering—in time it will rot away: 
time heals—and from there on up to Feldspar 
Brook lumbering operations have left the 
former beautiful woods gashed and scarred. 
Just above the abandoned site of the lumber 
camp on Feldspar Brook there is a new open 
camp built by the Conservation Commission, 
so the sign indicated. It was occupied by 
two men and a guide, with packs. Soon we 
passed lonely Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds— 
highest body of water in the mountains, infant 
source of the Hudson River—with Gray 
Peak rising to the north, Marcy to the north- 


ni 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


east. On reaching our objective saddle we 
saw the new Conservation Commission’s open 
camp, which has been built facing north and 
with the large boulder in front of it as a re¬ 
flector for the camp fire. Lowering skies 
and a few drops of rain led us to decide to 
sleep in the open camp, though the outfits 
of some other occupants were thereabouts. 
They had left their blankets hanging out on 
a pole to air—we rescued them and put them 
on the balsam bed out of the rain. Soon two 
men and three women came down on the 
Marcy Trail, one of the women stopping to 
pet Kim, and passed us, starting down the 
Devil’s Half Mile, toward Upper Ausable 
Lake. A little later our two fellow occu¬ 
pants of the open camp came up the latter 
trail, having taken the day to climb Hay¬ 
stack, so they informed us. They proved to 
be two young men from Jersey City—their 
first woods trip—and they had been there a 
week. Shortly it began to mist. The wind 


112 


M*W 



rhoto by Foster Disinger 


On Opalescent River 





















. 



























































































































































* 




































































































MARCY 


blew about, as it usually does in this high 
saddle four thousand three hundred forty-four 
feet above sea level, whipping the balsam tops 
angrily with a little hissing noise as it whirled 
and scurried around among them. Presently 
the mist ceased to fall, the sky brightened, and 
.Alvin expressed a wish to go up the thousand 
feet to the summit of Marcy for whatever of 
sunset we might see. So we started up. I 
went only part way, just above the balsams, 
and found a spot sheltered from the wind 
where I sat and watched Alvin make the rest 
of the climb up the rock surface. Kim had a 
great time running about over the mountain— 
he seems to thoroughly enjoy mountain tops. 
The clouds to the west reflected some dull sun¬ 
set tints. On descending we cooked a pot of 
rice for supper, sharing the fire with our two 
fellow occupants, and made a rousing camp 
fire of dead, seasoned, balsam stumps to turn 
in by. 

Lowering skies with a cold mist blowing 
about led us to sleep late next morning. 
”3 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


While preparing breakfast a man and his 
daughter came down from off the summit of 
Marcy with the information that the ther¬ 
mometer read forty-seven degrees up there 
and that rain and hail had pelted them hori¬ 
zontally as they came over the dome from 
Slant Rock, on John’s Brook Trail, where they 
had spent the night. Soon the two men and 
guide, whom we had seen below at Feldspar 
Brook Open Camp, came up from the direc¬ 
tion of Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds. On ap¬ 
proaching us their guide—short, lean faced, 
black moustache, dark eyes revealing French 
blood—sallied, “Turn your damper, so your 
chimney won’t smoke!” They stopped to chat 
for a few minutes and then went on their cold, 
wet way up the Marcy Trail. Our two co¬ 
occupants of the open camp packed up and 
went the same way. They had army packs, 
including small intrenching spades, canteens, 
and white canvas cylindrical bags strapped to 
each side of their packs, in one of which was a 
bottle of lemon juice. So wide and cumber- 
ii4 


MARCY 


some were their outfits that they looked like a 
pair of pack mules as they toiled slowly up the 
trail and gradually faded from sight into the 
descending mist. Before we had packed up 
a party of about fourteen Hebrew boys, with 
older leaders, came up the Feldspar Brook 
Trail and piled themselves and packs into the 
open camp out of the mist. We finished pack¬ 
ing and left shortly, placed our packs under 
some balsams, put on our light rain capes, 
belted them in about us, and went up the Sky¬ 
light Trail. 

The view to the northeast from Skylight is 
magnificent, alone well worth the short climb 
of five hundred seventy-six feet from the 
saddle. A great wall of rock rises hundreds 
of feet in front of you, the slides of Marcy to 
the left, Panther Gorge in the deep center be¬ 
low, its bottom two thousand feet below 
Marcy’s top, the slides of Little and Big Hay¬ 
stack to the right: over the top of Little Hay¬ 
stack lies dark wooded Basin, to his right the 
white sided Gothics, and in the distance, Gi- 

“5 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


ant—a view that lacks nothing in its wild un¬ 
spoiled grandeur. 

We descended, shouldered our packs, and 
began the ascent of Marcy in one of his tem¬ 
pestuous moods. I wish we could keep him 
named Tahawus, the Sky Splitter. It seems 
more appropriate for the most ancient peak on 
the earth’s surface, very old when all else was 
young, still bearing on his time worn breast 
plants of near glacial times, little scars left 
after wearily enduring the last ice sheet in¬ 
truding upon his solitude—plant life now 
found only in Lapland and points north—even 
they are not so plentiful as they once were, 
within man’s memory. As we climbed, the 
thick balsams—the fronds are thicker in 
higher altitudes—gradually became shorter 
until we passed between little, twisted trees 
only a foot high, then low, thick, blueberry 
bush tops, with now and then a small plant 
whose leaves had a tough, shiny appearance 
as though accustomed to much cold air, ice 
and snow—finally, rough surfaced, grey rock. 
116 


MARCY 


In hollow places on the rock are cushionlike 
masses of a tough little bush five or six inches 
high. In sheltered clefts may be seen gnarled 
balsams not over two feet high which have 
struggled there sixty years or more—trees 
whose normal height should have been forty or 
fifty feet. The wind blew from the south and 
materially assisted us up over the glacier 
planed dome—we could feel the gusts push 
the packs against our backs. The clouds shut 
us in, there was little we could see, the wind 
and rain did not induce tarrying—we kept 
moving to keep our blood in circulation. 

The views from Marcy, most often climbed 
of any of the high Adirondack peaks, are ex¬ 
celled in beauty by those from several lower 
peaks. Intruding into the surrounding wild¬ 
ness are evidences of civilization and forest 
fires—the wide, cultivated Elba valley to the 
north, and Lake Placid village—on a clear 
day you can see the hotel this side of the lake 
and many houses; the badly fire scarred Cas¬ 
cade country a little east of north; and burned 
ii 7 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


Giant to the northeast across the St. Hubert’s 
valley. The best view—and it is magnifi¬ 
cently wild—is to the east, down and down, 
deep into the well of Panther Gorge—you 
have to step down a little to appreciate the full 
depth of the gorge—backed by the steep, rocky 
side of Haystack, with a portion of Saw Teeth 
visible over Little Haystack, the Boreas to 
Colvin range above the south end of Hay¬ 
stack, above the latter range Nipple Top and 
his range, above the latter range again, Dix, 
with Middle Dix, South Dix, and Macomb 
with his slides, in the distance to the right of 
Dix—all fresh, primeval and unspoiled from 
the hand of their Maker. This view alone 
must keep old Tahawus contented. The 
views northeast over the piled up range to 
Gothic, and southwest over little Lake Tear- 
of-the-Clouds and tiny Moss Pond toward vir¬ 
gin wooded Redfield, are impressive. 

We descended on the John’s Brook Trail 
toward the saddle between Marcy and Little 
Haystack, where the Range Trail branches 
118 


MARCY 


off. Ere long we met a party of girls ascend¬ 
ing, some of them with knee trousers turned 
up, revealing bare knees as though clad in 
shorts, and with ponchos belted in at the waist 
with ends flapping in the wind and mist. We 
soon reached our objective saddle and were 
obliged to descend the John’s Brook Trail a 
short distance to find water. Soon we found a 
small, cleared spot near the trail where some 
one had camped—a wild spot, facing north¬ 
west at the head of the valley, which fell away 
sharply to our right, near the tiny brook— 
where we stopped and soon had a hot pot of 
oatmeal, in spite of the rain, which had in¬ 
creased in volume meanwhile. At first we 
obtained water from the thread of a brook by 
inserting one of our cups arm’s length into a 
rock crevice so that the drops, falling from 
some thick, yellow and light green moss, 
might gradually fill it—then we would empty 
its clear contents into one of our pails. Ere 
long the drops had increased to a stream 
nearly as large as my journal pencil, which 
119 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


trickled, with a pleasant little gurgling sound, 
as it ran into and filled the cup. 

After lunch we decided to stop where we 
were for the rest of the day and coming night 
and proceeded to make camp. It was the 
hardest task we had yet faced—to make camp 
in the pouring rain and strong wind. In a 
few minutes the tent was up over the small 
cleared spot, barely large enough for our bed. 
I cut balsam boughs, shook the rain drops off, 
and Alvin made a good thick bed of them. 
After a struggle with damp birch bark, wet 
twigs, and several matches we had the fire go¬ 
ing. We went up the trail and pulled down 
six or seven tall, dead spruces and balsams 
five or six inches in diameter and dragged 
them down to camp, cut them up into gener¬ 
ous lengths, and soon had a rousing backlog 
fire, as close to the open tent as we dared put it 
—about three and a half feet. Then we stood 
under the tent and let the heat steam and dry 
our soaked clothes. Kim had a long wait for 
his position in the tent under the blankets, for 
120 


MARCY 


we waited for the heat to reflect in and dry out 
the balsam bed as much as possible before we 
slept. He looked so wet and cold shivering 
in the wind. After a little he disappeared 
behind some rocks and we knew he had gone 
to dig in and find what comfort he could in a 
hole out of the wind and rain, until his place 
under the blankets was ready for him. Soon 
a man and two women passed, descending on 
the trail near us. We exchanged sympathetic 
halloos. Kim heard their voices, left his hole, 
barked, and followed them down a short dis¬ 
tance. The man called, “Is this your dog? 
You had better call him back.” We whistled 
and Kim, his curiosity satisfied, returned to 
his sheltered spot. After a pot of rice fla¬ 
vored with beef cubes and some tea, we got 
out of our damp clothes and into dry 
underwear and socks and went to bed, 
after closing the tent with unusual care, 
for we were in a somewhat open spot and the 
wind blew a gale, pelting the rain against the 
tent. We passed a comfortable night, Kim 
121 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


helping to keep us warm under the blankets—« 
the wildest I have ever spent in the woods, for 
it rained and blew and the tent flapped and 
tugged at its fastenings as we fell asleep and 
when we awakened during the night. 


122 


RANGE TRAIL' 













RANGE TRAIL 


T HE wind had veered around to the 
northwest and it was clearing as we 
arose and looked out and down the 
valley into our wet, cold world. While start¬ 
ing the breakfast fire a man and two women 
approached, going up the trail. They stop¬ 
ped and asked if we had slept and had kept 
warm last night. We said we had. “How 
did you do it?” inquired the man. We 
pointed to the tent. He asked if they might 
step over and look at it and they did so. He 
was much interested in our tent and said he 
was going to get one like it. All three said 
they had passed a miserable, cold night at 
Slant Rock, a little below us, and that they had 
seen the gleam of our camp fire through the 
trees the night before. Soon they went on 
their way for whatever views they might ob- 
125 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


tain on Marcy and we ate breakfast, giving 
Kim a good meal of cold rice left over from 
the night before. Then we packed and took 
the trail toward Little Haystack. At the 
point where I took the picture of Little and 
Big Haystack which hangs, framed, in my lib¬ 
rary , 1 we found icicles three and four inches 
long. On reaching the fork in the trail—to 
the right leading up over Little and then on 
to Big Haystack, to the left descending to the 
foot of Basin Mountain—Alvin said he 
wanted to climb Haystack. I waited in a 
spot sheltered from the wind, tying Kim to my 
pack, so he would not follow Alvin over the 
wet, slippery rocks in the cold wind. In 
a half hour Alvin returned saying it was a 
bleak spot, that he could not see anything from 
the summit, not even Little Haystack or 
Marcy, because of driving rain and clouds, 
and that he had not been able to stand erect on 
the peak because of the strong wind. 

As the remainder of the Range Trail over 

1 Frontispiece. 


126 


RANGE TRAIL 

the summits of Basin, Saddleback, Gothic 
and Armstrong, was the most beautiful part of 
the entire trip, we concluded to camp over 
night on the trail below Basin near where 
Little Squaw and I had once camped over 
night on traveling the same trail in 1915. 
Soon we came to the remains of an open camp 
near Haystack Brook, and as the balsam bed 
was a good one and there was plenty of wood 
near by, we concluded to stop, hoping for a 
clearer and more friendly atmosphere in the 
morning. We took stock of provisions. All 
we had left was a small quantity each of pan¬ 
cake flour, wheat cereal, oatmeal, beef cubes 
and salt. After putting up our tent over the 
bed of the open camp and setting our house in 
order, we ate pancakes plain, for dinner, 
washed down with some hot water flavored 
with beef cubes. While eating our dinner 
we discussed all the good things we were go¬ 
ing to eat when we arrived at St. Hubert’s 
next night, after the fashion of Hubbard and 
Wallace on their trip across Labrador, among 
127 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


unfriendly hills. In the afternoon we tried to 
keep warm before the fire, mended some 
tears in our clothing, and I wrote up the 
journal. Kim is snoozing in the tent out of 
sight under the blankets. 

We were up early and a clear sky greeted 
us (Thursday, August 23). After our break¬ 
fast of wheat cereal, flavored with salt, we 
climbed the twenty-three hundred feet to the 
summit of Haystack. 

I agree with Marshall that the views from 
Haystack are the most beautiful of all. The 
country on all sides is practically as wild as 
from Santanoni, the Elba valley being nearly 
eliminated from view by the north ridge of 
Marcy and Table Top Mountain, the fire 
scarred Cascade country being blocked out of 
view by Basin, only a small bit of the burn 
near Giant being visible. In addition, what 
we did not sense from Santanoni, glimpses of 
Lake Champlain and some of its surrounding 
flat land to the east, of a bit of Lake Placid 
128 


RANGE TRAIL 

Village to the northwest, and of a few houses 
away off to the southwest, just suggested civil¬ 
ization, reasonably far enough away and 
small enough, however, so as not to be unduly 
obtrusive and so as to increase the sense of dis¬ 
tance. All the rest is vast, unblemished wild¬ 
erness, miles on miles of it. And for the 
nearer views Santanoni, and Nipple Top as 
well, are outclassed: for on the west one looks 
down deep into rocky Panther Gorge, across 
it the slides of Marcy, over which towers the 
latter’s bleak dome, distant wooded ranges 
each side of him; down in the valley to the 
southeast is Upper Ausable Lake, flanked by 
the Boreas Range and Colvin, with Nipple 
Top and his range, and beyond it Dix, with 
his, piling up above in the distance; while 
down below to the northeast lies the great 
basin of primeval forest growth, backed by 
black, timber crowned Basin, sweeping up 
to the sky line, lower Saddleback peering 
around him, the white sided Gothics curv- 
129 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


ing toward the east, behind the latter Arm¬ 
strong, then Wolf Jaws, and off in the dis¬ 
tance, to the right, over Saw Teeth, and 
beyond rugged Noonmark, Giant. This lat¬ 
ter northeast view ranks as one of the best 
from any of the peaks. 

Reluctantly we returned to camp and 
shouldered our packs, now much lighter, for 
the steep climb of two thousand two hundred 
feet straight up Basin and on, now down into 
a saddle, now up, along the crest of the range. 
It was my third trip over this trail. Never 
have I enjoyed such an atmosphere on the 
mountain tops. Not a breath of air was stir¬ 
ring—an unusual condition. At one place 
on the north side of Basin a long rope is in 
place, one end securely fastened to a small, 
firmly rooted, yellow birch trunk, to assist in 
getting up and down a steep slide about 
seventy feet long. We walked down back¬ 
wards paying out the rope hand over hand, 
the four hob nails in each of our heels biting 
into the rock surface and holding us from slip- 
13 0 


RANGE TRAIL 


ping. Ascending the west edge of Gothic— 
his long slides down to the right disappear¬ 
ing into a wooded basin, to the left a little ex¬ 
posed rock surface, then small balsams—we 
found several steep places necessitating care¬ 
ful climbing. The surface of anorthosite 
weathers rough and we made the slow, care¬ 
ful ascent without slips, assisted in some places 
by hand holds in the rock and by grasping 
branches and trunks of balsams, crawling on 
hands and knees once or twice. Changing 
views unfolded in front, to the right, to the 
left, behind us. For short distances on the 
crest the trail passed between balsams a little 
higher than our heads, with glimpses through 
them of satisfying distances on either side. 
We went slowly. We stepped out on short 
side spurs for different outlooks. We rested 
frequently. The peace of the hills entered 
into our souls this day. 

From Basin the best views are Panther 
Gorge to the southwest, wide, wooded John’s 
Brook valley to the north, and the curving, 

131 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


virgin timbered basin to the south—these 
views give him high rank. From Saddleback 
—his top two little wooded crests separated by 
a hollow like a saddle—lower and hemmed in 
by neighboring peaks, the best view is toward 
Gothic, rising like a knife edge in front of you, 
up which edge the trail leads. From Gothic 
fine views lie to the southeast—over Saw 
Teeth, Mount Colvin, above him Nipple Top 
and his range, in turn topped by Dix and his 
range—and southwest toward Marcy’s bald 
crown. On Armstrong the best view is to¬ 
ward Marcy and McIntyre, the range piling 
up in front of you with beautiful slides and 
gorges visible. 

We cooked a pot of oatmeal, flavored with 
salt, for lunch, in the saddle between Basin 
and Saddleback where we found water. On 
over Gothic and Armstrong we went, but 
slowly, however, not only to absorb and store 
away in memory as much of the views as we 
could, but also because short rations had de¬ 
prived our legs of some of their energy. It 
132 


RANGE TRAIL 


was good to start down northeast off Arm¬ 
strong and realize we would have no more 
climbing that day—a day that gave us approx¬ 
imately five thousand seven hundred feet of 
ascending and seven thousand feet of descend¬ 
ing. Down to Beaver Mead Falls, down the 
east trail along Ausable River to the Club 
House, a little farther and we arrived at Mrs. 
Winch’s cottage about seven o’clock, tired and 
hungry. Genial Mrs. Winch welcomed us, 
though we were unexpected. 


133 




St. Hubert’s 

“When the morning was up, they had him to the 
top . . . , and bid him look south. So he did, and 
behold, at a great distance, he saw a most pleasant 
mountainous country, beautified with woods, . . . 
very delectable to behold.” 

—Pilgrim’s Progress. 


/ 






















ST. HUBERT’S 


W E ate buckwheat pancakes, with 
native, mountain flavored maple 
syrup, for breakfast (Friday, 
August 24), loafed, did necessary mending of 
clothes and oiling of shoes, arranged for hav¬ 
ing our clothes and food bags washed. 

I found LeGrand Hale at home next door. 
Seventeen summers before on our first trip to 
Marcy, Little Squaw and I had run short of 
provisions on the Elk Lake Trail above Upper 
Ausable Lake, having been held in camp by 
rain, and I had gone down to the club camps 
there, finding Mr. Hale, who gave me pro¬ 
visions from the pack he had just brought up, 
part way on his back over the carry between 
the lower and upper lakes, and on my sug¬ 
gesting pay for them had replied, “No, you’re 
welcome. I’ve been short in the woods my- 
137 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


self.” In previous years I had called at his 
house but he had not been in. He had be¬ 
come a sort of will o’ the wisp. Now I faced 
him. He looked me steadily in the eye. On 
my recalling the incident of seventeen years 
ago he said, “Now I’ve got you.” He told 
us he was not doing much guiding now. He 
looked his name, with something of the seren¬ 
ity of the mountains in his eyes. 

In the afternoon we took a short walk to 
Washburne Flume. On the way, soon after 
we left the main road, on a side road which 
led to the flume, a woman’s voice called to us 
from a woodshed at the rear of a house. We 
went over to the woodshed and saw a collie dog 
lying on the ground in front of it, a rope tied 
about his hind legs and to a post, a strap about 
his forelegs and the post, his nose, upper and 
lower lips and chin covered with projecting, 
fretful porcupine quills. Here was a job for 
us! We tied Kim to a tree some distance off. 
The woman took the strap off the collie’s fore¬ 
legs, tied them with a rope to the post and 


ST. HUBERT’S 


fastened the strap over the quivering jaws so 
he would not bite us. She laid a pillow under 
his head, placed a towel over his eyes, Alvin 
and the woman held the dog’s body down, 
and a young man recently from Scotland who 
had accompanied us from Mrs. Winch’s held 
his head, while I took a pair of forceps which 
the woman brought out of the house and pro¬ 
ceeded to extract the quills one by one. It 
was a slow task and the tiny barbs along the 
spine points brought blood as they were pulled 
out. Finally all were extracted from the 
twitching nose, lips and chin except for a few 
which broke off at the surface of the skin, and 
when the job was finished and doggy had 
calmed down a little, he seemed grateful for 
what we had done for him. 

The flume appeared to have been formed 
by a fracture in the anorthosite, the weak, 
crumbled edges weathering and wearing away 
with resulting walls, the north one some sixty 
feet high in one place. We scrambled down 
through it for about a mile. On the north 
139 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


wall we noticed at one spot half way up, a 
cedar tree about ten feet tall apparently grow¬ 
ing out of the bare, flat rock surface. We 
could not see any of its roots or any crevice 
where roots could find lodgement—but there 
it was. 

On the walk back to the cottage our new 
Scotch acquaintance told of his ascent, not 
long ago, of Ben Nevis, whose four thousand 
four hundred feet must make him likewise 
a friendly mountain—with a touch of dour- 
ness thrown in, probably. He had taken 
tramping trips in the Highlands, stopping 
overnight at the stone cottages of game keep¬ 
ers. Once he had arrived late in the day at a 
cottage he had been told of, to find its occu¬ 
pants away and the door locked. He had 
climbed to the roof, clambered down the 
chimney, boiled his water for tea in the fire 
place over a peat fire, spent the night, and on 
leaving in the morning had left a note thank¬ 
ing the absentees for the involuntary hospit¬ 
ality of their cottage. He told us how peat 
140 


ST. HUBERT’S 


was cut, piled and dried, and said that in some 
places preserved in the peat beds could be 
seen tree trunks charred by the great fire in 
the time of Queen Elizabeth. 

In the morning after breakfast we made for 
the top of Giant Mountain, the most easterly 
of the larger peaks. With renewed energy 
we did his thirty-six hundred feet in two 
hours and forty-eight minutes, taking the 
views from Roaring Brook Outlook and Falls 
on the way, and spent an hour and a half on 
his summit. The view to the east gave us 
large expanses of Lake Champlain fifteen 
miles and more away and many farmlands on 
both sides of the lake, smaller mountains, hills 
and ridges, much fire scarred, between, gradu¬ 
ally sloping down to the lake. To the south¬ 
east we had glimpses of Lake George, bring¬ 
ing memories of the romance forever enrich¬ 
ing that neighborhood—Deerslayer, Uncas, 
Chingachgook—and of the lake’s history, 
more romantic than fiction—Montcalm, 
Lord Howe, Campbell of Inverawe—made 
H 1 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


vivid and true to environment by Parkman, 
the woods lover, to be read and re-read to 
absorb the human background of the region. 
The best view was to the west of south through 
Hunter’s Pass, Dix, cloud topped, to the left, 
steep sided Nipple Top to the right. This 
side of the pass lay the valley of the North 
Fork of the Bouquet River, light green from 
its birches and poplars, recovering from the 
fire of 1903. The view of the great range to 
the southwest did not seem so very impressive. 
Its piled up peaks were too far off for much 
detail. Perhaps the clouds interfered some¬ 
what with our view. The deep St. Hubert’s 
valley to the west hollowed out below us, with 
cottages visible lying in its lap. 

Hunter’s Pass looked so wild and attractive 
we decided to pack through it on our way to¬ 
ward home, rather than through Elk Pass to 
the right of Nipple Top, as we had intended. 
We descended in an hour and a quarter over 
the well cut, much traveled trail, passing two 
parties on their way up. 

142 


ST. HUBERT’S 


In the afternoon we walked to Keene Val¬ 
ley, two and a half miles, found a letter from 
Little Squaw awaiting us at the post office, 
and purchased food for our food bags—also 
some oranges and chocolate creams which we 
craved after our simple woods fare, and some 
bones at the market for Kim. 

Next morning we attended morning service 
at Memorial Chapel of All Souls, at St. Hu¬ 
bert’s, the chapel being but a short distance 
from Mrs. Winch’s cottage. The chapel and 
its setting are rugged—befittingly so at the 
place named after the patron saint of the 
hunter—a plain wooden structure facing 
Noonmark, which raises its steep, rocky head 
above the tree tops to the south. To the right 
of the entrance stands a wooden cross rising 
out of the top of a pile of weathered anortho¬ 
site stones at its base: the oldest rock but one— 
the Grenville strata, widespread and abundant 
only in the Adirondacks and eastern Canada— 
on the earth’s surface. Farther to the right 
among the trees is a wooden cabin with an in- 
x 43 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


side fire place, and containing a cot, chair, a 
few dishes and some shelves—for the use of 
the visiting clergy, one would suppose. Be¬ 
fore the cabin stands a small, square, black 
totem pole about four feet high, surmounted 
by a black, flat, boulder shaped piece of wood 
on which stands the wooden image of a small 
black bear. On the boulder shaped pedestal 
on which the bear stands erect are the words, 
“Bear Den ” 

In the afternoon we rested and then dug 
some worms to take with us for a try for some 
trout in East Inlet of Elk Lake when we had 
worked through the pass. In the evening, 
much pleasant fireside chat. 

Mrs. Winch related an incident which oc¬ 
curred when the slopes to the south of Giant 
were lumbered years ago. One of the draw 
roads took a sharp down turn on the steep 
rocks on the northeast side of the small tribu¬ 
tary brook running into the North Fork of the 
Bouquet River southeast of Chapel Pond—the 
spot is plainly visible from the Chapel Pond 
H4 


ST. HUBERTS 

Road, some of the road construction at the 
steep turn being still in place. A teamster 
was driving a team down the road drawing 
some logs when the load got out of his control 
and went plunging down off the road edge to¬ 
ward the brook below. The driver cut the 
harness and saved one horse from going down 
with the load but could not save the other, 
which slipped over and lodged on a narrow 
shelf below the road and some distance above 
the brook bed. Some men descended to him 
but try as they would could not get the horse 
back on to the road or off the shelf. A fire 
was built near him to keep him warm, he was 
blanketed, fed and watered. Next day they 
tried again, but unsuccessfully, News of the 
incident traveled to Keene Valley and some of 
the villagers came up to look the situation 
over. Block and tackle were used in further 
unavailing attempts. A villager stepped up 
to the harried lumber contractor, owner of the 
horse, and said, “I’ll give you five dollars for 
the horse.” “Done,” said the contractor. 
145 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


The money was passed and the transaction was 
closed. The villager thereupon hitched 
block and tackle to a tree trunk across the 
brook, passed the rope end from it up to the 
shelf, tied it to the horse, and pulled him off 
over its edge. He plunged down, landed in 
a pool of the brook sufficiently large to break 
the force of his fall, emerged, swam to shore, 
climbed out, and was none the worse for his 
experience except for a few scratches. The 
contractor attempted to revoke the sale but the 
new owner of the horse stood firmly—he had 
purchased a horse worth about three hundred 
dollars for five. A law suit brought by the 
contractor to test the matter resulted unfavor¬ 
ably to him. 


146 


Hunter’s Pass 

“Where the rude axe with heaved stroke 
Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, 

Or fright them from their hallow’d haunt. 
There in close covert by some brook, 

Where no profaner eye may look, 

Hide me from day’s garish eye, 

While the bee with honied thigh, 

That at her flow’ry work doth sing, 

And the waters murmuring 
With such consort as they keep, 

Entice the dewey-feather’d sleep; 

And as I wake, sweet music breathe 
Above, about, or underneath, 

Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, 

Or the unseen Genius of the wood.” 

—Il Penseroso. 

“But let me oft to these solitudes 
Retire, and in Thy presence reassure 
My feeble virtue.” 

—William Cullen Bryant. 
















THE PASS 


9 


THE PASS 


A FTER breakfast (Monday, August 
27) we once more shouldered our 
packs, with food for at least six days 
—we made allowance for possible rain—and 
including some luxuries we had not carried on 
our longer trip. We took along some beef 
for a stew, which Mrs. Winch cooked for us 
so it would keep in the pack—also a few po¬ 
tatoes, onions and carrots and a plentiful sup¬ 
ply of raisins and chocolate. On leaving 
Mrs. Winch gave us some summer apples for 
the top of our duffle bags. We followed the 
Noonmark Trail from the golf links up until 
it reached the fork, to the right leading up 
Noonmark, straight ahead for Dix. Soon we 
passed some old, abandoned lumber camps 
and shortly came to the North Fork of the 
Bouquet River. Where the trail crossed the 

151 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


stream we stopped for lunch, of bread and 
peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate and an 
apple apiece. 

Kim, with renewed energy after many huge 
meals at Mrs. Winch’s, left us on a hunt and 
soon sharp yelps told us he had holed some¬ 
thing. We went over to the spot where he 
was digging, and listening, could hear the 
frantic digging of clawed feet. But Kim 
could dig faster and soon he pulled out from 
under some stones a medium sized woodchuck. 
Avoiding the sharp, snapping chizel teeth— 
though not entirely, for Kim got bitten in the 
under jaw—Kim soon finished him and then 
laid down and rested, panting over his wet, 
pink, quivering tongue, looking on his kill. 
After a rest Kim took the chuck in his mouth, 
proudly carried him a short distance off the 
trail, whence I quietly followed, placed him 
carefully in a hole under the roots of a spruce 
tree and nosed and patted the leaves and 
woods duff until he had entirely covered him 
152 


THE PASS 


up. After a rest we again buckled the straps 
of our packs on to our shoulders. 

The last time I had been through the pass, 
with Little Squaw, we had left the Dix Trail 
soon after it crossed the stream and had fol¬ 
lowed the brook up, striking very bad going 
through down, burned timber and small, 
thick, second growth birch and poplar sap¬ 
lings. This time we studied the map and re¬ 
solved to get elevation by following the trail 
up Dix a ways and then walking down and 
around his northwest ridge into the mouth of 
the pass, reasoning that it would be easier to 
travel through that rough valley head on the 
level or on a slight descent than to pack up 
alongside the brook bed in it. After gaining 
five or six hundred feet elevation by way of 
the trail we left it and cut across to the south¬ 
west, and after an hour of very bad going over 
down timber, through second growth and 
among the rocks, we came to the brook flowing 
north out of the pass. It was a wild spot, tall 
153 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


down spruces and balsams with tops pointing 
north indicating that the most severe wind 
storms hereabouts came from the south, 
through the converging sides of the pass. We 
looked at our watch—it was five-thirty—and 
concluded to camp at the first likely place we 
came to. Soon we came upon a fairly level 
spot close by the brook and shortly the tent 
was up over a good bed—handfuls of thick 
moss, on top of them plenty of balsam fronds 
—and the hunter’s stew was bubbling in the 
pot. 

I like to have the tent pitched by a brook. 
It is pleasant to lie, at the day’s end, and listen 
to the varying tones of its voice, purling, 
murmuring, quietly, among the stones of its 
bed. Day in, day out, along its quiet reaches, 
it glides with the reflection upon its face of 
the wild beauty of its banks, even of a bit 
of heaven’s blue and a star or two as well. 
Day in, day out, it tumbles steadily with a 
rippling laugh over its stony course. At 
154 



In Hunter’s Pass 




































































































< 






















































































THE PASS 


times you will hear human voices, soft and 
low, as from behind a closed door, calling, 
laughing, singing, in the distance—sometimes 
an orchestra plays, from around a far corner 
—a corner you never can turn. I am re¬ 
minded of what was written of the Forest of 
Arden, “books in the running brooks, sermons 
in stones, and good in everything.” The 
Arden forest and ours have points of resem¬ 
blance. The voice of our brook increased in 
volume during the night, for it rained, and 
rained hard. Dreamily we tucked the blan¬ 
kets around us and dozed off to sleep, to the 
patter of the rain drops on the thin, water¬ 
proofed tent within a few inches of our faces, 
the smell of balsam in our nostrils. 

It was still raining in the morning and 
fog surrounded the tent. This pass seems to be 
coy, shy, unwilling to disclose its wild beauty, 
for on my previous trip through it, we had had 
clouds and rain and went through without 
seeing much else besides the small portions of 
155 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


it upon which we placed our feet in toiling 
through. We resolved to wait over in camp 
until the rain should cease and slept, break¬ 
fasting late with a misty rain still falling. 
We spent the rest of the day quietly in the tent 
and sitting before the cheery camp fire on the 
“deacon’s seat”—the log laid across the foot of 
the bed at the entrance of the tent. We dis¬ 
cussed what would be a good vocation to take 
up for a life’s work, and I wrote up the 
journal. 

The next day was clear. We had wooed 
and won and finally were about to enjoy the 
wild, virgin beauty of the pass. Packing 
through was difficult. We went very slowly 
—we had to. Down timber, piled up rock 
masses, tumbled about, moss covered, into 
which your foot would disappear, then your 
ankle, to be followed by your leg, and finally 
by your knee, into some hidden crevice. The 
packs tugged and swung on our backs. We 
sat down many times, both by and without 
choice. In time we reached the height of 
156 


THE PASS 


land, thirty-one hundred twenty feet above sea 
level, one of the high passes of the Adiron¬ 
dack^—exceeded only by Algonquin, Opales¬ 
cent Head and Caribou Passes—of a certainty 
one of the wildest—with a cliff to our left, 
about sixty feet sheer—and could look down 
the valley to Elk Lake lying amidst light 
green timber, the black topped soft wood hav¬ 
ing been cut out. The rocky sides of Dix on 
the one side, the steep, balsam covered sides of 
the Nipple Top range on the other, and the 
piled up confusion of the floor of the pass it¬ 
self gave us as much wild beauty as we could 
wish for. We took pictures and began our 
descent on the other side to the right. After 
a while we saw cut stumps and down lopped 
tree tops and ere long came to a draw road, 
and then to a small, abandoned lumber camp, 
high up in the south entrance to the pass, with 
a small log stable near by with shingles on its 
roof riven out of native cedar. Then down 
the tote and draw road combined—we called 
it the boulevard after traveling the pass—to 

*57 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


the lower, abandoned, main lumber camp 
where we ate lunch. 

We decided we were in good position to 
make our climbs of Nipple Top and Dix and 
walked down the tote road about a mile where 
we found a level spot for the tent on the east 
side of East Inlet. We made a luxurious 
camp. The tent went up level and true. I 
felled a thrifty balsam and out of its top we 
made a bed at least eighteen inches thick. 
We spread a mantle of yellow gravel, carried 
from the bed of the brook in our pails, to take 
our fire. We made a neat backlog fire place. 
A white birch stood in front of the tent, with 
strips of bark hanging from its trunk conveni¬ 
ent for starting fires. Our last camp would 
be one to remember. Then we cut poles, 
rigged our lines and went after some trout for 
supper. 

Alvin waded, I kept dry, along the bank. 
A hawk flew high above us, his long drawn, 
whistlelike call—a sound like escaping steam 
—identifying him as a red tail. A kingfisher 

158 



t 


South from height of Hunter’s Pass 









THE PASS 


came flying down the brook, close to the water. 
As soon as he espied us, he gave utterance to 
his scared, stacatto call, swerved, and hastened 
his flight on down stream, a streak of blue re¬ 
vealing his scolding progress. At one pool, 
Alvin, standing in water to his knees, called 
out to me, standing on the bank and casting 
below him, “Dad, see the beaver!” 
“Where?” I asked. “Right in front of you,” 
he replied. Sure enough, there was a me¬ 
dium sized beaver floating in the pool, little 
head and eyes alert, brown, furry body, flat 
tail on top of the water. We stood still. He 
eyed us quietly, then dove but without slap¬ 
ping the water with his tail, and swam slowly 
under water with long, easy strokes to the foot 
of the pool about thirty feet downstream, 
where he emerged and again floated, quietly, 
eyeing us. Soon he turned, dove again and 
swam up stream toward Alvin. “Where is 
he?” asked Alvin. “Right under your feet,” 
I replied. He came to the surface of the 
water so close to Alvin that he touched him 
159 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


with his short pole. The beaver quietly dove 
again, continued up stream, emerged, climbed 
up over some stones and disappeared into the 
next pool above. 

We caught twenty-seven small trout and ere 
long they were turning brown and crisp in the 
hot bacon fat in the fry pan over the camp fire. 
Seasoned alders—and there were plenty there 
—make good coals. We had a pleasant eve¬ 
ning camp fire after drinking our tea and were 
soon enjoying our comfortable bed. 


160 


NIPPLE TOP 





NIPPLE TOP 


N IPPLE TOP to climb, and a clear 
day to do it in—another long Adi¬ 
rondack ambition about to be real¬ 
ized. We went up the tote road and then our 
boulevard, a few yellow and reddish tinted 
bushes alongside suggesting autumn, to the 
upper lumber camp where a brook came into 
the pass from off the east side of Nipple Top 
—then up this brook, which came tumbling 
out of a semi-circular basin. Soon we espied 
a lumber chute, a dry one, leading down the 
steep side of the mountain. It consisted of a 
trough, set up on timber cribs, built of long 
spruce and balsam tree trunks not much over 
six inches in diameter, two small logs wide at 
the bottom, the side logs rising about two feet 
on either side, nailed together. Into the tops 
of the two bottom logs of the chute large wire 
163 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


nails had been driven part way, a foot or so 
apart, and their tops bent over in the direction 
of the descending chute so that the bent over 
tops of the nails and their heads projected 
above the surface of the bottom logs. We de¬ 
cided they were inserted to retard the speed of 
the short length logs as they went sliding down 
the steep slope. 

In lumbering steep mountain sides some¬ 
times wet chutes are built—of open, board, 
boxlike construction, caulked or painted to 
hold water, set up on posts or cribs, into which 
up above a brook is turned and down which 
logs are floated. One of the latter kind may 
be seen coming off Marble Mountain, north 
of Whiteface, and diving under the highway 
through a concrete culvert on the road from 
Wilmington to the Notch and Placid. 

For about a mile we walked up in the chute. 
The proper way to make the climb to the sum¬ 
mit from this side is to continue straight up 
the brook bed and then on up a little to the 
left of the head of the brook. We relied upon 
164 


NIPPLE TOP 

the United States Geological Survey Quad¬ 
rangle of the locality which indicated the peak 
as lying to the right of the head of the brook— 
a slight error—went to the right and climbed 
steadily for a half hour. Soon we came to 
some thinly wooded ledges, one of them nearly 
straight up, like a vine covered fence standing 
round the basin, which we climbed with the 
assistance of hand holds on the rock surface 
and the exposed roots of small trees. In one 
place we had to lift Kim up. Ordinarily we 
did not have to do this. We would work up 
into a steep place and would whistle for Kim 
so that we might give him a lift. In a few 
minutes the click of his metal tags would 
sound above us and he would descend to watch 
us climb up to him, his four legs having taken 
him around and above us more quickly than 
we could climb. We finally reached the top 
of the north shoulder and ate lunch sitting on 
a rock in the warm sunshine enjoying the 
northeast view down the valley up which we 
had come into the pass, with its light, green, 
165 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


sapling leaved mantle, and, a little to the left, 
a picturesque view over some dead and living 
balsam tops, over wooded Dial and Bear Den 
Mountains and rugged Noonmark across to 
fire scarred Giant. To the northwest the 
great range lay spread out before us from 
Haystack clear across to Armstrong. Nipple 
Top’s peak lay a half mile to the south with 
balsam between, which we did not find diffi¬ 
cult to go through, however, as the trees rose 
some distance above our heads. In a little 
while the summit was under our feet, a climb 
of twenty-four hundred feet from our camp. 

The view to the east was magnificent, Dix, 
rocky sided, rising massive and apparently 
sheer out of the pass, with Middle Dix, South 
Dix, and Macomb, with most of the latter’s 
slides blocked off by one of his ridges, to the 
right. To the northeast toward Giant the fire 
scar robs the view in that direction of a little 
of its wildness. The view to the south—we 
had to descend a ways and climb trees to ob¬ 
tain it—reveals Elk Lake with its islands, 
166 


NIPPLE TOP 

glimmering in its wide, light green, rolling 
valley,, many descending ridges in the dis¬ 
tance, in one of which jiestled Clear Pond, 
Mount Hoffman beyond. A superb view lies 
off the west side, range on range unfolding 
and piling up into view: first Colvin with sev¬ 
eral cliffs visible high up from out his tim¬ 
bered side, one with a large white spot stand¬ 
ing out amidst its neighboring and surround¬ 
ing dark grey rock; then Saw Teeth; above 
the latter the Gothics with the sunlight shin¬ 
ing on their curving, white, rocky sides—a 
magnificent sight; a little to the left lower 
Saddleback; farther to the left dark Basin; 
then Marcy’s rounded dome, with Haystack 
this side of him; on farther, a little to the 
right of Marcy, peering from behind his 
northern shoulder, McIntyre; more to the 
left, over wooded Bartlett Ridge, rising in 
turn above the dark Boreas range, Allen; and 
beyond the latter miles on miles of unspoiled 
woods. After gazing awhile the inclination 
comes to murmur amen. 

167 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


Other high views of the great range reveal 
it piled up from end to end. Only from this 
summit and from Dix to the east does one see 
all of the range tops spread out across the hori¬ 
zon, the Dix view not ranking so high, how¬ 
ever, because from the farther distant latter 
you lose much detail and near by Nipple Top 
obtrudes into the field of vision blocking off 
the beauty of the lower half or middle dis¬ 
tance of the picture. This latter view ranks 
with three others, constituting what I take to 
be the four best single mountain top views, 
namely, the view southeast from Marcy—the 
reverse of the one from Nipple Top just de¬ 
scribed—the view northeast from Skylight, 
both over Panther Gorge, and the view north¬ 
east from Haystack described above. They 
are not excelled by those from any other peaks 
in wild, unspoiled grandeur. 

In rating the peaks for beauty of views I 
would place Haystack first for the reasons 
given above in describing his views. I find 
it difficult to choose between Santanoni and 
168 


NIPPLE TOP 


Nipple Top for second place. The fire scar 
to the northeast from Nipple Top weighs 
against it as compared with the virtually un¬ 
spoiled wildness visible from Santanoni, but 
the near views, to the east, south and west, are 
better than from Santanoni. Perhaps these 
unsurpassed, wild, near views give Nipple 
Top second place. 

We descended quickly, striking straight 
down east to the head of and down the brook 
and the chute, eating many raspberries on the 
way, of sweet flavor. 

On the way down our boulevard we noticed 
in some soft gravel the fresh tracks of a large 
buck and read their story. They came up on 
the road at regular intervals to the point 
where we first saw them. At this spot were 
two tracks of fore feet close together, each im¬ 
print widely curved at the front—not pointed 
like the tracks of a doe—with square ends, 
something like a cow’s tracks. Then we saw 
several confused tracks close together near the 
first two, with two pointing around in the op- 
169 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


posite direction down hill. Down beyond 
about ten feet on the right side of the road 
were two more, with front edges cutting in 
more deeply; beyond them about fifteen feet 
bn the edge of the road two more, with two 
smaller ones close behind them; then they dis¬ 
appeared in the raspberry bushes, where 
turned over tops and bent leaves revealed 
their direction, toward the cover of the 
woods. 


170 




































DIX 


A NOTHER clear day for Dix. We 
studied the map. It indicated the 
old trail from East Inlet as rising 
into a small saddle on his southwest ridge on 
our side. The recent lumbering thereabouts 
would have eliminated the trail at least up to 
this saddle. We decided to strike up east for 
the saddle hoping the trail would give better 
walking for the rest of the way to the top. 
We went up to the lower, abandoned lumber 
camp and started up east. Our progress was 
slow, up over ledges, through bushes and 
down timber tops. 

After a little while Kim barked fiercely, up 
above us. We soon came up to him. A large 
flat boulder had arched across some other 
rocks making a small den with two entrances. 
Kim disappeared into one and barked—short, 
173 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


sharp yelps. At the other entrance I espied 
the black ends and white lower portions of 
porcupine quills, brown fuzz between them. 
Kim had attained unto porky wisdom from 
previous encounters and did not close with 
him, to our great relief. Kim came out of 
the den and ran around to the other entrance. 
At once the porcupine, of medium size, came 
out of the other opening and clambered clum¬ 
sily down the mountain side, dragging his flat, 
quilly tail behind him, Kim after him, bark¬ 
ing fiercely, refusing to come to us in his ex¬ 
citement when we called. Soon, however, he 
did come to heel with one lone quill in his 
lower jaw, which I pulled out, a wince from 
Kim accompanying the pull, thereupon a tail 
wag. 

We found that lumbering had been carried 
on farther up than our objective saddle. 
After reaching it, at various and sundry places 
therein of the old trail we found a trace. We 
would follow it for short distances but it had 
a habit of disappearing into lopped tops and 
174 


DIX 


raspberry bushes. When we would come to 
a down, weathered dead log, climb up on it, 
and walk its slippery length for thirty or forty 
feet above tops and bushes, we would feel 
elated over our progress and hope we could 
step over on to another and continue—only to 
have our hopes dashed to bush at its end. 
After much floundering about we finally gave 
up trying to trace and follow the trail and be¬ 
gan to toil straight up. We ate lunch on a 
ridge top above our saddle and on looking 
about us discovered some old blazes on near 
by tree trunks and found we were on the old 
trail, which, after resting, we followed to the 
top, although it was much overgrown and ob¬ 
structed by fallen trees above the lumbering. 
Dix made us humble and respectful. We got 
down on our knees to him many times—he 
forced us to do so. In five and a half hours 
we had conquered him, the hardest climb we 
had yet had, although we had ascended but 
twenty-six hundred feet. 

We climbed up on the top of the large rock 
175 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


on South Peak and espied there two water 
pockets filled with rain water. We had had 
no water since early morning and down on the 
edge of the rock we flung ourselves, thrust our 
lips into the cool, refreshing pools, and drank 
long, holding Kim by his collar meanwhile, 
but with difficulty, until we had finished, when 
he too drank his fill. 

The view toward Macomb and down into 
Elk Lake valley was beautiful—somewhat 
like that from Nipple Top. The great range 
to the west was impressive—also like the view 
of it from Nipple Top, with the latter in¬ 
cluded in place of Colvin, Nipple Top, how¬ 
ever, blocking off much of the country this 
side of the tops of the range, the range itself 
farther away, disclosing less detail. The 
little basin on the east side of Nipple Top was 
open to our view, marred at its lower end by 
lumbering. Its fringed bowl must have been 
a pretty sight in its virgin state. The fire 
slash from the north side of Nipple Top clear 
around to Macomb, more than a half circle, 
176 



Kim on Dix 







DIX 


robbed the views of much of their primeval 
beauty. Our impression was that Dix was a 
mighty mountain—perhaps our climb had 
helped to make us feel that way about him. 

On the summit we found a cylindrical, brass 
cup about five inches long with a screw in a 
swiveled socket to fasten its cover on, the 
cover, however, being missing—maybe taken 
thoughtlessly by someone as a souvenir—a 
rusty, tin, tobacco box cover screwed down in 
the place where the brass cover should be, the 
cup bearing on its outside surface the raised 
initials, “A. M. C.” In the cup were a bit of 
a pencil and many scraps of paper containing 
names and dates of visitations there. The 
first date we noticed w^as August 17, 1910. 
One scrap of paper under date of June 9, 1920, 
informed us that Herb Clark and Bob Mar¬ 
shall climbed Dix and South Peak on that day 
and that the latter was stung by a hornet on 
South Peak where the hornets were written of 
as being thick and hot of temper. We did not 
see any. 


177 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


While we were enjoying the views a man, 
two women and guide came up from Keene 
Valley way. They chatted with us and to¬ 
gether we watched a hawk soar above the 
mountain, rising in wide circles with quiet, 
outspread wings until it became a tiny dot, 
difficult to see and follow against the blue sky. 
We did not envy our fellow climbers their 
long descent into and across the valley up 
which we had traveled into the pass and on to 
St. Hubert’s, which they were going to make 
that afternoon and evening. 

We decided to go down the Elk Lake Trail 
to the first saddle and then strike down directly 
west to the pass. After a half hour of steep 
descending from the trail we came to a brook 
and following it struck the head of another 
timber chute, similar in construction to the 
one on the east side of Nipple Top, and fol¬ 
lowed this down to our boulevard leading 
down from the pass. 

Alvin had one last try for trout—the last 
i 7 8 


DIX 


day of the season—and caught sixteen. We 
decided to save them for next morning’s break¬ 
fast and cooked a pot of macaroni, flavoring 
it with cheese. 

After our trout breakfast (Saturday, Sep¬ 
tember i), a long walk over the tote road 
around Elk Lake brought us to Elk Lake 
House in time for dinner—place of beautiful 
view over the lake toward Dix, Nipple Top 
and Colvin—place of many memories, includ¬ 
ing Charles Dudley Warner and his bear, Jos¬ 
eph H. Twichell, and last but not least Henry 
Pelatiah Jones, the lazy. There we found 
friends. We were hungry for other human 
companionship and our tongues ran telling of 
our trip to appreciative listeners. 

We were asked if we had been to Hitch-up- 
Matilda Ford, over Avalanche Pass way. 
We had not and had never heard of it. It 
seems a woods traveler’s wife had sprained 
her ankle and their guide was carrying her out 
on his back. When they reached this ford on 
179 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


the brook her husband had admonished 
her, “Hitch up, Matilda!”—such was the 
christening. 

I told of a trip I had taken years before 
when Doctor Andzulatis was alive and with 
us, into the little hill country east of Schroon 
Lake—hills with much poplar, birch and 
pine, a blue berry paradise, some of their tops, 
in a good berry year. You could walk up and 
down over many of them in a day and they 
hold a different kind of woods beauty, all 
their own. Once we started out to find Griz¬ 
zle Ocean and in working around Thunder¬ 
bolt Mountain got lost and finally made camp 
that night in the rain on the edge of Putnam 
Pond. Our host exclaimed as soon as we had 
ascertained that it was Putnam Pond, “I hate 
Put’s Pond 1” and after the evening meal, be¬ 
fore the camp fire, told us why. Some prior 
summer he was lost in the woods and came in 
sight of the pond. It lay in his way, so he un¬ 
dressed, tied some logs together with a piece 
of cord he had in his pocket, placed his clothes 
180 


DIX 


on the logs and swam across, pushing the logs 
in front of him. He dressed and proceeded 
on his way, soon coming to water. On thrash¬ 
ing around he discovered he was on an island, 
so he was obliged to make another raft to keep 
his clothing dry and swim on across. When 
he was nearly dressed the second time he dis¬ 
covered he had left his belt on the island, so 
he undressed again, swam back to the island, 
found his belt and returned with it in his teeth. 
Dressing he proceeded on his way and soon 
came to a road where he met a man who asked 
him whence he had come. On informing him 
the man said, “Why didn’t you take the road? 
There was one close by where you started 
from.” On the way to his cottage it began to 
rain and he arrived wet, tired and hungry— 
the end of a perfect day. 

Among these hills you may be lucky enough 
to catch some overlooked trout. On this trip 
I had caught a square tail twenty-eight and 
three quarters inches long, with head weigh¬ 
ing two and a half pounds after we had 
181 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


brought it out—an accident that may happen 
to a fisherman once in a lifetime. One would 
wish for many lifetimes for the joy of the three 
quarters of an hour it took to bring him to net 

Elk Lake House was built of peeled spruce 
logs years ago, and artistically built, by Pell 
Jones, its guardian angel. I suspect it took 
him a long time to build it, even as time is 
measured in the woods. In the sitting room 
on the white, peeled spruce log partition wall 
to the left of the stone fire place, nailed up on 
the wall, still may be seen a thin, board, soap 
box, painted forest green, its cover on hinges, 
with a small spring set to barely keep the door 
closed. On the outside is the lettered word, 
“Safe,” and there is an imitation combination 
dial, lettered around it, “H. Pelatiah Jones.” 

Seventeen summers ago on returning from 
our first Marcy climb Little Squaw and I had 
found Pell down in his small potato patch 
digging worms, sitting in a rocking chair to 
do it, moving the chair about with him as he 
changed position to dig. To the evidence of 
182 


DIX 


former host Pelatiah’s temperament one of 
our friends contributed two items. Once Pell 
heard a shot fired from across Elk Lake—it 
may have been open season—and rowed his 
small guide boat up to the spot from which 
the shot had been fired. He was seen return¬ 
ing after a while, slowly, stern first, deer feet 
projecting over the stern, backing water—too 
lazy to turn the boat around. On another 
occasion in reply to a remark that he had had 
a busy season he had said, “Yes, Mrs. Jones 
has worked pretty hard taking care of the 
boarders, and I have done considerable more 
walking around than I calculated on.” An¬ 
other incident reveals something of his charac¬ 
teristics from another angle. One summer 
one of the guests, none too robust, fell into the 
lake, and our friend meeting him rowing in 
to the dock off the lake, wet and cold, insisted 
on his drinking some of the contents of his 
flask, which held a particularly good brand. 
After a few minutes the none too robust one 
said, “That’s very good stuff!” Pell grunted, 

183 


FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


“Humph!” thrusting tongue into under lip 
and moving that hirsute nether member up 
and down, as was his sometime wont, “but you 
have to fall into the lake to get any of it.” 

After dinner in response to our telephone 
message to May’s below near Blue Ridge, stal¬ 
wart Archie appeared driving up the road in 
his car to take us out. We found Mrs. May 
presiding in her kitchen and managing her 
household, apparently as well and capable as 
ever. 

Our vacation was over. We had made 
friends with sixteen of the peaks, fifteen of 
them being the principal ones among the 
forty-two rising over four thousand feet above 
sea level. We hold in pleasant memory in¬ 
vitations to become acquainted with many 
more, solicitations to explore many unseen 
wild spots lost behind their ridges. We hope 
to go again next summer, and we are sure Kim 
hopes so too. 


184 


APPENDIX 


List of the forty-two peaks over four thousand feet 
in elevation above sea level. 




Elevations, as per 


Peaks 

U. S. Geological 



Survey Quadrangles. 

I. 

Marcy (Tahawus) 

...... 5344* 

2. 

McIntyre 


3- 

Skylight 


4- 

Haystack 

. 4918* 


Gray Peak 1 


5- 

Whiteface 


6. 

Herbert 


7- 

Dix. 


8. 

Basin .... 


9 - 

Gothic .... 

.4738* 

10. 

Colden .... 

.4713* 


1 Gray Peak is situated about a half mile west of Marcy, 
rising just north of Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds. It is not con¬ 
ceded to be a separate peak by some. Others state that it is 
a peak on the same great base that supports the Marcy dome, 
as separate and distinct a mountain as Skylight, which also 
rises from the same base. It is said to have been named by 
Verplanck Colvin after Asa Gray, the botanist. Acknowledg¬ 
ment is made to Mr. Russell M. L. Carson, of Glens Falls, 
N. Y., who has investigated the history of the names of the 
peaks, for information about Gray Peak. 

♦Indicates peaks up which there are trails. 

185 












FRIENDLY ADIRONDACK PEAKS 


Little Haystack 2 . 47 °° * 

11. Giant.4622* 

12. Santanoni.4621 * 

13. Nipple Top.i . 4620 

14. Redfield .4606 

15. Wright (North McIntyre) .... 4585 

16. Saddleback. 4530 * 

17. Armstrong. 4455 * 

18. Panther Peak. 4448 

19. Table Top. 444° * 

20. Macomb.4425 

21. Iroquois .44II 

22. Seward.4404 * 

23. Middle Dix. 4404 

24. Rocky Peak Ridge (Giant’s Wife) . . 4375 

25. Allen. 4345 

26. Esther.4270 

27. Big Slide.4255 * 

28. Upper Wolf Jaw.4225 

29. Street.4216 

30. North Seward.4215 

31. Lower Wolf Jaw.4175 

32. Phelps (North Table Top) . . . .4175 

33- Nye.4160 

34. South Seward.4139 

35. Saw Teeth.4138 

36. South Dix.4135 

37. Seymour.4120 

38. Cascade.4092 

39. Colvin.4074 * 

40. Porter.4070 

41. Dial .4023 

42. East Dix.4020 

2 Little Haystack is not considered to be a mountain separate 
from Big Haystack, although commonly called Little Haystack 
to distinguish it from the main peak. 

l86 











































INDEX 


Peaks 

Allen, 167 

Armstrong, 127, 130, 132, 166 

Basin, 55, 115, 126-132, 167 
Bear Den, 166 
Blue, 22, 55 
Boreas, 118, 129 

Caribou, 93, 105 
Cascade, 105 
Cellar, 100 
Chimney, 99 

Colden, 23, 55, 7 L 77 , 81, 92, 103, 104 
Colvin, 118, 129, 132, 167 

Dial, 166 

Dix, 23, 55, 102, 118, 129, 132, 142, 166, 173 

Giant, 102, 115, 118, 128, 130, 141, 144, 166 
Gothic, 55, 93, 105, 115, 118, 127, 129, 131, 132, 167 
Gray Peak, 111 

Haystack, Big, 23, 55, 115, 118, 126, 128, 166-168 
Haystack, Little, 115, 118, 126 
Henderson, 54, 55, 69 
Herbert, 91, 94 


187 



INDEX 


Hoffman, 23, 167 

Iroquois, 95, 104 

Kempshall, 25 

MacNaughton, 60 
Macomb, 23, 55, 118, 166, 176 
Marble, 164 

Marcy (Tahawus), 23, 55, 93, 104, 112, 167 
McIntyre, 23, 55, 83, 89, 93 , 165 , 167 
Middle Dix, 118, 166 

Nipple Top, 55, 118, 129, 132, 142, 163, 176 
Noonmark, 130, 143, 151, 166 

Panther Peak, 35, 36, 43, 51, 52, 56, 69 

Redfield, 93, 118 

Saddleback, 127, 129, 132, 167 

Santanoni, 23, 25, 35, 43, 51, 60, 69, 128, 169 

Saw Teeth, 118, 130, 132, 167 

Sawtooth, 52 

Seward, 30, 35, 54 

Seymour, 41, 54 

Skylight, 93, 115, 168 

Snowy, 22 

South Dix, 118, 166 

Table Top, 128 

Wallface, 55, 68, 92 
Whiteface, 52, 92, 105 
Wolf Jaws, 130 


188 


INDEX 


Places 

Adirondack Lodge, 84 
Algonquin Pass, 95, 104, 157 
Ampersand, 61 
Andrew, Lake, 54 

Ausable Lake, Upper, 112, 129, 137 
Avalanche Lake, 103, 105 
Avalanche Pass, 23, 71, 84, 93, 94, 103 

Back Log, 99 

Bartlett Ridge, 167 

Beaver Mead Falls, 133 

Blue Mountain Lake, 21, 22 

Boreas Range, 129, 167 

Bouquet River, North Fork of, 142, 144, 151 

Bradley Pond, 36, 54, 56 

Calamity Brook, 69, 82 
Calamity Pond, 70 
Caribou Pass, 93, 157 
Cascade country, 93, 94, 102, 117, 128 
Cascade Notch, 55, 92, 105 
Cedar River, 22, 99 
Champlain, Lake, 128, 141 
Chapel Pond, 144 
Chapel Pond Road, 144 
Clear Pond, 167 
Cold Brook, 90, 91 
Cold River, 25, 27, 32, 42, 52, 54 
Cold River Dam, 35 
Cold River Open Camp, 41 
Colden, Lake, 70, 71, 78, 80, 83, 90, 92 , 95 , 104 
189 


INDEX 

Conservation Commission, 41, 67, 69, 80, 97, ill, 112 
Duck Hole, 31, 36, 42, 43, 44 
Eagle Lake, 21 

East Inlet of Elk Lake, 158, 173 
Elba Valley, 92, 94, 105, 117, 128 
Elk Lake, 55, 157, 166, 176, 179 
Elk Lake House, 179, 182 
Elk Pass, 142 

Feldspar Brook, in 

Feldspar Brook Open Camp, hi, 114 

Flowed Land, 69, 70, 81-84, 92, 104 

George, Lake, 141 
Grassy Brook, 99 

Hanging Spear Falls, 82 
Haystack Brook, 127 
Henderson, Lake, 54, 61 
Henderson Monument, 70 
Hunter’s Pass, 142, 153, 157 

Indian Lake, 22 
Indian Lake Village, 99 
Indian Pass, 55, 67, 92, 95 
Indian Pass Brook, 62, 80 

John’s Brook Valley, 131 

Keene Valley, 20, 143 
King’s Flow, 99 

Lewey Lake, 99 
Long Lake, 19, 25 


I90 


INDEX 


Marion River, 21 
May’s, 184 

Memorial Chapel of All Souls, 143 
Moss Pond, 118 
Mountain Pond, 41 

Opalescent Head Pass, 157 
Opalescent River, 82, 83, 104, in 
Opalescent River Open Camp, 70, 84, 105 

Panther Gorge, 55, 115, 118, 129, 131, 168 
Placid, Lake, 52, 92, 105, 128 
Placid, Lake Village, 92, 93, 117, 128 
Preston Ponds, 19, 31, 42, 46, 61 
Putnam Pond, 180 

Raquette Lake, 20, 22 
Roaring Brook Falls, 141 
Roaring Brook Outlook, 141 

Sabattis’, 26 
Sanford, Lake, 55 
Santanoni Brook, 56, 60 
Scott Pond country, 92 
Shattuck’s Clearing, 27, 28 
Slant Rock, 114, 125 
South Meadow, 105 
St. Hubert’s, 118, 142 

Tahawus Club, 56, 60, 69, 89 
Tahawus Post Office, 56, 78 
Tear-of-the-Clouds, Lake, in, 114, 118 
Tirrel Pond, 22 

Upper Preston Pond, 59 

I 9 I 


INDEX 


Utowana Lake, 21 
Washburne Flume, 138, 139 
T rails 

Adirondack Mountain Club, 22, 26, 36, 
Armstrong, 133 

Calamity Brook, 69, 70, 78, 79, 84 
Cold River, 19, 29 
Colden, Lake, 90, 102, 104 
Colden, Mount, 81, 104, 106 

Devil’s Half Mile, 112 
Dix, 151, 153, 173, 174, 178 

East Ausable River, 133 
Elk Lake, 137 

Feldspar Brook, hi, 115 
Flowed Land, 78, 82, 83 

Giant, 142 

Indian Pass, 62, 67 

John’s Brook, 114, 118, 119 

Marcy (Tahawus), 112, 116 
McIntyre, 90 

Noonmark, 151 

Opalescent River, 78, 83, 84, ill 

Range, 118, 126, 130 

Santanoni, 56, 60 
Skylight, 115 


192 








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